Questionable Love (A Love Beyond Labels #2)

by Danielle Rocco

  “I thought I told you no pink hearts on our bed.”

  She takes her face off my neck and looks down at the bed. “Those aren’t pillows, tough boy. Those are all the pink love notes you made me.”

  “I know. I’m just teasing you. And, now, teasing time’s over, torture girl. I need to be inside you.” I set her down and stare at her in nothing but little shorts and a tank top. I inhale a deep breath and pull her into me, then drop straight to my knees. She runs her pretty pink fingernails through my hair as I press my face into her stomach, clutching the back of her thighs. Slowly, I pull down her shorts, sliding them down her long legs. When she’s bare before me, I press a kiss to what belongs to me. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Jace,” she replies, her fingers pulling on my hair.

  Then it’s quick. I stand back up, tugging her tank top over her head, letting all her pretty dark hair spill around her beautiful chest. I kick off my shoes, and she unzips my pants while I stare at her. As I step out of my jeans, she wastes no time pulling my T-shirt off. My breathing picks up when she runs her hands up my stomach, my chest, and when she wraps her hands around my neck and holds on to my hair, I lift her up and lay her on our bed.

  “I’m going to make love to you slow right now,” I say, looking into her eyes. She smiles and pulls me down to her waiting lips.

  “Give me your lips, baby.”

  I brace myself for the feeling that’s going to wash over me the moment we connect again. I softly press my lips to hers, and she opens up, letting me slide my tongue into her mouth, finally tasting her—a year’s worth of stolen kisses, too quick to ever fully embrace out of fear of being pulled away from her. I kiss her hard, with built-up emotion pulsing through my veins. We moan into each other’s mouths, and her hands go straight to my hair as our bodies beg to become one the way our mouths are doing. I can’t take it anymore. I’m not even inside her yet, and I’m ready to explode with need. While our tongues make the sweetest love inside our warm, desperate mouths, my hands find her beautiful breasts. My girl drops her legs, and I find my perfect place. In one swift move, I thrust inside her, finally inside my girl again.

  Shay gasps softly, and I intake a blissful breath while slowly making love to my girl after over a year without her touch. With the moonlight casting a glow over her pretty face, I can see her perfectly as she breaks our kiss and stares at me. Her eyes flutter closed.

  “Don’t take those pretty eyes off me,” I say, cradling her face. Warm and slick, our bodies move together, and I’m on such an emotional high I can already feel myself ready to crash hard. “Oh, God, baby, I don’t know how much longer I can last.”

  DON’T HOLD BACK

  HE LOWERS HIS FACE to my neck, and his mouth presses against my skin. “It’s been so long, and God, you feel so good,” he says as I grip his strong back, pulling him into me with each slow thrust of his hips. “I missed you so bad, Shay. Every single second of every moment we’ve been apart, I missed everything about you,” he whimpers against my neck with quiet cries.

  My boy cries as he makes love to me, and I know he’s holding back all of his emotions, because like always, he wants everything perfect for me, but right now, he needs to let perfect go and give in to all the pent-up emotions he felt while locked away from me.

  “Don’t hold back, Jace. Let go and love me like you need to.”

  He lifts his head off my neck. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t hurt me.” I softly pull his hair back off his face to look into his eyes. He pulls them together, struggling to let go. I know him. He’s always been gentle with me. He tightens his jaw, then leans down, pressing his lips to mine.

  “Remember when I told you I’d love you many ways, and no matter what, it would always be love?” he asks. I nod and slowly close my eyes, already feeling so much from him. He slides one arm underneath me, pulls my hips up off the bed, and thrusts hard and deep inside me. I let my arms fall over my head and watch my boy finally be reckless as he takes everything he’s needed and desperately wanted for so long. “Do you know what it was like for me being taken away from you, watching you scream, hearing your voice full of sadness in that courtroom?” He relentlessly thrusts hard, gripping my skin with his strength. “Torture, baby,” he cries out. “Every day was torture not seeing you.” A tear slips out of my eye and rolls down the side of my face as I watch my strong boy let his emotions go. “I missed you, Shay.” He pushes into me deeply, tightening his jaw. “Every day I longed for you, and I’m so sorry, baby…so sorry…I hurt you,” he says, pumping into me over and over again.

  A mix of sweat and tears falls off him and onto my body. When I can’t take it anymore, I tighten around him. He can feel me because he slows down and stares at me. “Do you know what you’re doing to me right now?” He closes his eyes and tightens his jaw again. “Don’t ever torture me again and keep me away from this.” He gently lets my hips fall back down onto the bed and lowers himself against me. Reaching up, he entwines mine into only his and rests them over my head. He grips my hands tight as I grip him inside me. He slows down and loves me like the very first time all over again. “Don’t ever keep me away from loving you,” he whispers with barely there thrusts.

  “I won’t keep you from showing me how you feel ever again,” I tell him, feeling my eyes flutter closed as all that love and emotion from our soul-binding connection finally releases. “Jace…”

  I’M A MAN’S MAN, BABY

  SHE MOANS MY name softly, clutching me tight, her arched back falling to the soft sheets as all my strength falls away. “I’m coming with you, baby.” And then, like every time before, we find lips and kiss and kiss and kiss, slowly, deeply, and so fucking passionately to the point we can’t catch a breath. Her mouth then leaves mine, and she lets go of my hands, bringing them around my neck to hold me close. She cries as she tells me she loves me, and the only thing I feel is utter euphoria as I lay my head to her chest, feeling her skin, finally feeling like I’m fucking home.

  After a few minutes, still pulsing inside her, I start to lift off her for fear of crushing her. “Don’t move,” she says. I lift myself enough to look at her face.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’re not.” I smile and kiss the best lips ever created and just lie on top of her in our room, on top of our soft sheets with hundreds of little pink paper hearts I destroyed while making the sweetest love to my girl. Then she wiggles beneath me. “Okay, buff boy, you’re hurting me now.” She giggles. I laugh and slowly pull completely out of her, and if that didn’t feel like the best damn thing ever, leaving her warmth.

  “God, I love getting wet with you.” I push off her and fall alongside her. She turns her head to me and gives me the best smile, and I’m seriously so crazy in love and already wanting back inside her.

  “Did you miss me?” she says adorably, lying on her side to face me. I lie on my side and pull her perfect hip toward me so her body is right next to mine.

  “Did I miss you? Put it this way. I will move every mountain that ever gets in my way before I ever lose that again. God, pretty girl, that was seriously—”

  “A calendar-worthy moment?”

  “Yeah, baby, that was definitely a calendar-worthy moment,” I agree. She giggles, and I lie down on my back, letting out the deepest damn sigh as she cuddles up to me, spreading all of that soft hair on my chest.

  “Jace?”

  I play with her hair and look around our room with a smile. “Yeah?”

  “Did you work out a lot when you were away? Your body is even more perfect than before.”

  “Did you feel what we just did?” I ask. She nods, then presses a kiss to my chest as her hand runs up and down my forearm.

  “Imagine dreaming of doing that to you all day every day. I had to burn a lot of energy working out in prison.”

  “I don’t ever want to be apart again.”

  “We won’t,” I tell her. With her h
and on my chest, she props up to look up at me, and I can already see tears ready to spill out of her eyes. “I know I need to work a little harder on those promises, but I really do promise you, we will never be apart again.”

  “I can’t ever lose you like that again, Jace.”

  “You won’t.”

  She runs her finger down my face, and I close my eyes, feeling her gentle touch. “What are you doing?”

  “I just want to feel your face,” she says softly, crawling on top of me, tracing her finger slowly over my scar. I open my eyes, thrusting up into her.

  “I want to feel you, too.” I moan as our bodies rub against each other, then my body kicks into time-missed moments daydreaming of legs that are currently all over mine. Taking one of those arms she fucking loves to hold on to, I switch positions, putting her on her back so she is underneath me once again. I show her what I want to feel and how I feel as I take my time and love her again and again until her sweet little body can’t take any more.

  “WERE YOU A LITTLE backed up?” she says when she catches her breath after I pull out again.

  “Maybe just a little bit,” I answer jokingly, running my hands through my damp hair.

  “Just a little bit?” She sits up.

  “Maybe a whole lot a bit.” I bite my bottom lip, feeling so fucking light on my feet. “Let me clean you up,” I say, forcing myself out of the bed and heading into the bathroom to get a towel to clean up my girl.

  “You have little pink hearts stuck to your butt, naked boy!” She giggles. I stop and look over my shoulder, and I can see a heart literally sticking to my ass. I smile and go back to the bed, pushing my girl down and over onto her stomach and smacking that ass.

  “Ouch!” she says all sassy. I didn’t do it hard. She’s just being dramatic.

  “I told you no pink on our bed. When I get back in here to clean you up, they better all be off this bed.”

  She giggles and looks at her butt. “You gave me a red mark on my booty.”

  “Yeah, and I’m going to give you another one if I ever see pink on our bed again. I’m a man’s man.”

  “Don’t act tough, alpha boy. You’ve been making me pink hearts, like, forever!”

  “I know, but I don’t want to sleep with them.” I laugh, grabbing some crumbled hearts off the bed and throwing them at her. “Toss those out. I ruined them with my sexy body.”

  “I’m never throwing away any hearts you make me. I have every single one you’ve ever made me.”

  “Then you better start grabbing them, or I’m tossing them out when I come back in here.”

  She scrambles to her feet, and that naked, sexy body runs all around the bed, gathering every bit of the heart-shaped love I made for her over the last few days she was torturing me. But, I know my girl. She doesn’t care what they look like. She will keep them and treasure every single one of them because I made them for her, and anything I have ever given her, she holds close to her heart.

  I have to find that charm bracelet. Shay’s devastated she lost it, and I didn’t want to show my feelings in front of her when she told me she couldn’t find it, but damn, it hurt my heart that she doesn’t have it wrapped around her pretty wrist.

  I need to find that damn bracelet.

  I REMEMBER EVERYTHING

  I DON’T REMEMBER FALLING asleep. I just remember falling into my girl over and over again until I pretty much passed out under the soft sheets, her warm body pressed against mine. Pink toes rub my legs and quiet moans escape my girl as she sleeps soundly next to me.

  It’s early, but finally light enough from the impending sun pouring in from the window. I just lie here, looking around the room that every week while I was away Shay so lovingly told me about as she decorated it. It’s so damn pretty, and I love everything she’s done. I can’t help but envision getting my girl our very first house someday. I want to buy her a home that’s ours, not her parents’ that they are letting us live in, but our very own home that I worked my ass off to get us. I run my fingers through my hair and let out a slow sigh.

  “What are you thinking about?” she says sleepily next to me. I turn to her, and her lips form a smile as she closes her eyes.

  “You, baby. I’m always thinking about you.”

  “Like, how I’m the most amazing girl ever?”

  I lean over and press my lips to hers while her eyes stay closed. “You are definitely the most amazing girl ever.”

  She smiles and opens her eyes. “How did you sleep?”

  “After what we did last night? Like a baby. I haven’t ever slept like that… Well, I did once.”

  “When?”

  “The first time I slept here, right here in this bed, when I asked you to marry me. That was the most content I’ve ever felt in my life.”

  “That was the most beautiful moment ever,” she says. I stare at her, and even though I thought it was pretty damn special, it’s not how I ever thought I would ask her to marry me. I went with my heart, and the words poured out of my soul when I asked her to be my wife. But that’s not going to be her only memory of that moment, because she deserves so much more than what I gave her back then. I know she doesn’t care and would never change it, but my girl is getting the proposal I always daydreamed of giving her.

  “I’m going to give you an endless amount of beautiful moments,” I tell her, getting up out of the bed and going over to look at the pictures of us hanging on the wall. She comes up behind me, placing her arms around me, as I stare at the one of us with the paper I had her charm bracelet wrapped in for her birthday. She told me about it during one of our phone calls.

  “Do you like it?” she asks. I grab her hands and stare at how pretty our picture looks in its frame.

  “You made us a home,” I whisper, getting choked up. She comes around to the front of me, and I look down into her eyes as I shake my head slowly, overwhelmed by all she’s done while I was away.

  “I will always make us a home, Jace.”

  I let out a breath. “I’m going to buy you the prettiest house I can afford, and anything you want to make it pretty, I will work my butt off to get for you.”

  “I know you will, but as long as I have you, I don’t care where I live or what I have. I just want you and me and lots of pink pretty pillows for lots of kids to throw around to drive you crazy.”

  “I love you, Shay,” I say as a single tear falls from my eye.

  “I love you, too, Jace James, my forever boy.” She wipes away my tear. “Don’t forget. I want to be a young mom, and I want lots of kiddies that look like you.”

  “You know I don’t forget anything you ever say to me. I remember our beach day talk about what you want.” She gives me a pouty face. “Why are you giving me a pouty face?”

  “What I want?”

  “Yeah, I remember everything you told me you wanted.”

  “I thought you wanted all those things, too?”

  “I do want those things, probably sooner than you think. I’m going to be turning twenty-one. So you know, I was thinking around twenty-five, we could get married and start thinking about having kids.”

  “You want to wait until you’re twenty-five to get married?” she whispers, playing with the ends of her hair. “That’s an awfully long engagement. You asked me to marry you when I was eighteen.” She pouts.

  “Well, you’re nineteen, baby. I’m sure you aren’t ready to marry your boy yet,” I say nonchalantly, reaching up with both of my hands, pushing my hair back. She watches me while biting down on her lip and twisting her hair tightly around her finger. I start feeling bad that I’m messing with her, when I know I’m only teasing her.

  I was practically thrown in prison right after I asked her to be my wife, and when she should have been excited, planning a wedding over the last year, she spent her first year engaged, crying for her incarcerated fiancé. I’m an insensitive ass right now.

  I pick her up and fall onto the bed with her. She doesn’t laugh and giggle like sh
e normally would, and I know I’ve hurt her feelings.

  “Do you think for one second, I would wait until I was twenty-five to marry you?” I ask, kissing her neck. “Do you think for one second, that I don’t want dark-haired, blue-eyed little girls all around me throwing pretty pink pillows in my face?” I kiss her stomach and hold her down. “I’ve wanted to marry you since my eyes looked into yours that very first day we met.” I kiss her thighs. “ Since you broke your heart-shaped sandwich in two and handed me the other half of your heart.” I kiss her face. “Since you placed your little hand in mine.” I kiss her lips. “And, when I took that pretty pink prom dress off your body and made love to you the very first time under the moon and stars, I’ve wanted to marry you and have a family with you.” I reach down and put what has only ever belonged to her into what will only ever belong to me deep inside her. “I’m not waiting until I’m twenty-five to marry you.” I pull out and thrust slowly into her. “I’ve released so much love into you since you opened that door last night, and I wouldn’t doubt it if we already started that family.” She wraps her arms around me and tightens, making me lose my breath. “I will marry you today, I will marry you tomorrow, but make no mistake, baby, as soon as your dad gives me his blessing, you are becoming Mrs. Jace James. And, I pray to God we have sweet little babies that look just like you right after we say I do.”

  YOU SO CRAZY

  JACE LIFTS HIS FACE off my chest. “I’d marry you today, but I want you to at least have a day to plan our wedding and get a dress, so how about tomorrow?”

  “You know Jules would never let me plan our wedding in one day.”

  “It’s not her wedding. It’s ours.”

  “Well then, I need more than one day to get perfect for you.”

  “You are always perfect. I have a feeling I know where you are going to want to become my wife, and we don’t need anything fancy for that. You don’t even need shoes,” he says, grinning. He knows me very well. There is only one place, our place, where I want to become Mrs. James.