by Ann, Jewel E
*
Day
Jude couldn’t keep his mother’s dirty secret. Every day he felt a piece of his humanity being chipped away. Two days after catching her in the arms of another man, he took his sixteen-year-old girlfriend’s virginity and then told her they were over. No woman would ever have the chance at his heart. If the woman he had on the highest pedestal couldn’t be faithful, then no woman could. Fuck them all. And that’s exactly what he did.
Jessica became the exception. He would protect her, even from her own delusions of Grant and Sunny Day being the perfect couple—the shining example of happily ever after. She wanted to marry a man like their father and love him with Sunny’s passion. Sunny’s fucking passion. She had passion, just not for their father.
Jude planned on telling Jessica, then the both of them would break the news to their father. Grant didn’t share or understand Jude’s interest in computers and Jude had no desire to work under the hood of a car or mess with greasy motorcycle parts, but he respected the man who worked hard for his family and risked his life to protect the lives of others. Grant Day was his father and he loved him.
“Jujube?”
Jude shook his head, staring at his computer screen. “You know I don’t respond to that name.”
Jessica plopped on his bed, stretching her gum out then wrapping it around her finger before sucking it back into her mouth. “You just did respond.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Because you’re just like Jujubes—tough, yet sweet on the inside.”
“I don’t think Tessa thinks I’m sweet on the inside.”
“Yeah … I heard about that. You dated her for nine months, took her virginity, then dumped her. Was the sex that bad?”
“It wasn’t about the sex.”
“Then enlighten me. Because after nine months, I don’t think the proper protocol for breaking up with a girl is to pop her cherry before shattering her heart. I think you were supposed to promise to respect her in the morning, then cuddle her afterward … or something like that.”
Jude clicked from one screen to the next, not really wanting to have that conversation. He had more important things to discuss with sister dearest.
“Yeah, well, I don’t respect any woman.”
“Ouch. Good thing I’m not a woman. Just a weak little daddy’s girl, according to cock-face Knox.”
“You just piss him off. That’s all.”
“Clearly. And why is that again? Because I work circles around everyone else, including you some days? Or is it because I’ve knocked him on his ass more than anyone else during sparring?” She giggled. “Stupid fucker.”
“It’s because you’re Grant Day’s daughter.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does.” Jude swiveled in his desk chair. “Shut my door. I have something to tell you.”
“I have something to tell you first.” She shut the door and lowered her voice. “I’m going to San Diego with Claire. Her cyber boyfriend wants to meet her now that she’s eighteen and she wants me to go with her. She’s telling her parents we’re going to L.A. for a concert and that’s what I’m telling Mom and Dad too.”
“You’re going to San Diego so Claire can have sex with some stranger?”
“Nobody said anything about having sex, and he’s not really a stranger. They’ve been dating online for over a year.”
“He could be a serial killer.”
“You think a serial killer is going to date a girl for a year and refuse to see her until she’s eighteen, only to kill her? I think out of your two brilliantly paranoid assessments, the sex scenario is more likely.”
“Rape.”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “She’s an adult. If it’s consensual, it’s not rape. Besides, I’ll be there. Do you really think I’m going to let anything happen to her?”
“Then why are you telling me?”
She walked behind him and hugged his neck, giving him a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek. “Because we don’t have secrets. Right?”
He nodded slowly.
“Now…” she stood and played with her gum again “…what do you need to tell me?”
Twisting his lips to the side, he shrugged. “We’ll talk when you get back.”
“You sure? Is it about Tessa?”
Jude shook his head. “Indirectly, but it doesn’t matter until you get back.”
“OK. Dad expects you to track my phone, so when he asks for an update, don’t fuck up and say I’m in San Diego when he’s expecting me to be in L.A. Got it?”
Jude brought his middle finger to his forehead and saluted her.
“Nice. Is that what you did to Tessa after deflowering her?”
He spun around in his chair again and focused on his computer screen. Bursting her bubble would have to wait until another day.
Chapter Seventeen
Knight
Confronting Maddie’s professor didn’t go well. In college, parents trying to settle disputes between instructors and young adults was frowned upon. Of course he denied everything, saying Maddie came to him and asked for extra credit and he told her it was not an option for his class. Without proof it really was Maddie’s word against his. Ryn made sure to let him know that she was also going to talk to the Dean of Students just so the incident would be on record.
It was a risk, but she made sure the professor knew Maddie’s father played golf with the Dean of Students. She failed to mention that her asshole of an ex-husband saw nothing wrong with extra-credit blowjobs. Instead, she hoped he would decide it to be in everyone’s best interest to pass Maddie, even if she didn’t earn the grade. Ryn wanted her daughter as far away from that predator as possible. Period.
Before leaving campus she tried calling Jackson several times, but it went straight to voicemail. She needed to hear his voice to calm her nerves. Instead, she held her phone up to her ear, waiting for Preston to answer his phone. There was no doubt in her mind that he would.
“Calling to apologize for your meathead boyfriend?”
“I’m calling to ask why the hell you encouraged Maddie to give her sick bastard of a professor what he wanted. For Christ’s sake, why are you even in her life? She needs a father, someone to protect her from assholes like him, not a pimp. The thing is … I was so pissed when she told me what you said, but I wasn’t surprised. You’re a monster and I should have packed up my daughter and moved halfway across the world to get us both away from you. Instead, I stayed and not only have you tainted her with your bullshit about our failed marriage, but now you’re making her think she has to spread her legs to get a college degree!”
“First of all, she’s our daughter, which you seem to forget—”
“You never wanted her,” Ryn said through gritted teeth.
“I never wanted you either, but you got yourself knocked up with my child so I had no choice. But don’t sweat it, sweetheart, because you both have grown on me over the years and maybe it’s just my age or sentimentality, but I want us to work. I want us to be a family again. Maddie needs a father … a role model, and you need a man with more to him than just a punch card to the local gym.”
“Family? Are you kidding me? We were never a family. You ignored your daughter, beat your wife, and stuck your dick between the legs of anything that walked.”
“Now, now … it takes two to tango.”
“Tango! Our marriage wasn’t a dance. It was a fucking concentration camp!”
“My, your rogue lover must be influencing you with some vulgar language. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that word come out of your mouth before.”
“Fuck you! Fuck your family reunion. Then fuck off, asshole!” She ended the call then screamed, gripping the steering wheel as if she wanted to rip it right off the dash.
Preston Iverson was the devil. He drew the absolute worst from her. All those years later and he still tortured her with his words. She needed Jackson. After escaping an abusive husband, she’d f
ound comfort in the arms of a murderer. What were the chances?
*
After ringing the doorbell several times and knocking on both the storm door and side window, Ryn sulked back to her car. She needed the security of Jackson’s arms. Instead, she climbed back in her car and let the tears fall. In between sobs she laughed.
“He’s just not home. Why are you crying?” she asked herself, resting her forehead on her hands gripped around the top of the steering wheel. Not once in her adult life had she allowed herself to need a man—until Jackson. After dealing with Preston, she needed Jackson so badly her chest felt painfully hollow.
Bang bang bang!
Ryn jerked her head up and there he stood in a gray hoodie and jogging pants, face flushed, rapid puffs of air condensing between his lips and her window. He frowned, brow drawn tight.
She smiled, blinking her teary eyes. He opened her door.
“What’s wrong?”
Ryn leaped into his arms.
“Hey now … what’s going on?” He hugged her to him.
“You weren’t home.” Her words muffled into the neck of his hoodie. “Oh God. I didn’t mean it like that.” She pulled back, keeping her hands cupped to the back of his head. “It’s been a shit day … and I … I just really needed to see you. I know that sounds crazy but—”
He kissed her. Tasted her. Claimed her in the deepest recesses of her heart, places no man had ever been before. Ryn wanted to kiss him for eternity, or at least until he filled every inch of her mind, leaving no room for the pain of her past.
“It’s not crazy.” The whisper of his words over her lips chased away the events of her day, at least for that moment.
He moved to shut her car door.
“Don’t!” She gripped him tighter. “If you move then this moment will end.”
Jackson chuckled. “And what is this moment?”
Searching his eyes, she smiled. “It’s perfection.”
He laughed again. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Not in your arms.”
“Well, I did run nearly ten miles. I feel like a furnace—a sweaty, smelly furnace. I need a shower.”
She pinched her lips together, concealing her grin as she shrugged. “I like showers.”
His eyes grew wide. “Do you now?”
“I do.” She played with the strings to his hoodie.
“As I recall, you don’t take showers with men.”
“I’ve recently made an exception.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, biting her lip. “Younger guy. Tattoos. Geeky glasses. Fairly nice body.”
Jackson puckered his lips. A stern look appraised her with an unnerving intensity. “Fairly nice?”
“Yes. He could use some fat on his body. Women like little love handles.”
“Well if you need something to hold on to, I can offer you something rather large and quite firm.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“I suppose I could see whatcha got.”
Jackson smirked. “Follow me.” He took her hand and led her inside.
She sat on his bed, enthralled with every move he made, from something as mundane as untying his shoes to the more erotic show of him undressing. Every moment with Jackson was a pinch-me moment.
“Tell me about the tears.”
She looked at his eyes, having drunk in every other part of his body. “Maddie has a professor offering extra credit in exchange for sexual favors and her father condones that behavior. Apparently the job that successful women have to master before making it to the top is the blowjob.”
“Don’t let my sister hear that. She’d hunt down that professor and castrate him, then she’d do the same thing to your ex-husband.”
“So I should definitely say something to her?”
Jackson chuckled, but his smile faded within seconds. “I’ve had a shit day as well. We should have stayed in bed.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“I want you to take off your clothes.”
“I talk better with my clothes on.”
“I fuck you better with your clothes off.”
Ryn opened her mouth to reply. Nothing.
“It was your idea.” He crossed inked arms over his chest, completely comfortable standing naked in front of her.
“Yeah, I was emotional yet oddly more confident in the driveway.”
Jackson cocked his head to the side. Every look felt like an assessment. “We can fuck in the driveway, but it’s going to be cold and I have a hunch there might be something in the association’s code of conduct that prohibits it.”
Ryn laughed. “Ya think?”
“Yes. I think the first law is no speeding and the second is no fucking in the driveway. Now strip.”
Using borrowed courage from some unknown place, she stood. It was a start.
“You’re mine for eternity, so you might as well get used to these eyes looking at your naked body—only these eyes.”
Her heart drummed against her chest in a terrifying yet exhilarating rhythm. In an unexplainable way, she both hated and loved how far out of her skin she felt when he looked at her.
“Let’s start with this … What part of your body have I not seen?”
The hint of a smile played with the corners of her mouth.
“Better yet, what part of your body have my lips not touched?”
Tugging off her shirt, she smiled. Gone were the compression bras; she didn’t burn them, but they were hauled off with the trash shortly after the infamous refrigerator sex. Lace, satin, and underwire took their place.
“What you’re doing right now feels more intimate than anything you’ve ever done to me with your mouth.”
“We’ll see about that.” He wet his lips, eyeing her white lace bra. Approval glimmered in his eyes.
She removed the rest of her clothes, eager to be in his arms. He took a step back as she moved toward him.
“Stop.”
She froze. Her hands searched for a place to be: hanging idle at her sides, covering her breasts, shielding her neatly-shaven pussy?
“Repeat after me.”
“What?” Her voice squeaked with disbelief.
He grinned as his ego gobbled up her confidence. “I’m beautiful.”
Ryn squinted.
“Say it.”
She sighed. “I’m beautiful.”
“I’m taking back every bit of confidence that bastard took from me.”
It would never happen like that, but someone who hadn’t been in her shoes could never understand. However, she loved the naked man standing before her for saying it.
“I’m taking back every bit of confidence that bastard took from me.”
“I’m worthy of happiness.”
That one hit harder than it should have. She’d never given happiness much thought.
“Say it.”
“I’m … I’m worthy of happiness.”
“I’m going to marry Jackson Knight and love him in spite of his multiple fucked-up personalities.”
“Jackson—”
“Say it.” His voice carried a rare pain and vulnerability.
“I’m going to marry Jackson Knight…” she stepped closer and rested her hands on his chest “…and I’m going to love Every. Single. One. Of his fucked-up personalities.”
“I’ve had a shit day,” he whispered, brushing his thumb along her cheek. “Until now.”
She nodded slowly, then looked up at him. “I’ve had a shit life … until now.”
“Touch me,” he said.
“Where?”
“Everywhere. Make me feel human again.”
She could do that. She could make him feel human. After all, he made her feel alive.
Jackson looked at her with complete surrender as they stepped into the steamy abyss. His breath caught when she touched him. He closed his eyes and let her move her soapy hands over the firm planes of his body. The pain in his face crushed her.
What had happened to him? Could one human take the life of another and still feel whole? Or did he give away a piece of himself with every life he took?
The water washed over her like guilt. What if he needed to tell her? Ryn didn’t want to know everything. She loved Jackson Knight now and just like her past, she didn’t want to let yesterday taint today and steal tomorrow.
Water clung to his eyelashes as he blinked them open when she shut off the water. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he lifted her up and carried her to the bed, not stopping for towels.
“We’re drenched,” she shrieked as he threw back his comforter and tossed her onto the cold sheets.
Before she could protest with another word, he crawled up her body while covering them completely with the comforter. Ryn liked their private cocoon. She also liked how he wasted no time warming up her body with his.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered over her skin.
She closed her eyes as his tongue parted her folds, his lips soft on her sensitive flesh. Ryn grabbed his hair and let her legs fall open for him. Everything he did meant something so much greater than physical desire. The woman who survived years of abuse had learned to trust again, but more than that, he’d taught her to believe. When Jackson touched her she believed in herself and she felt truly beautiful.
“Jackson …” she writhed beneath him as he kissed his way back up her body, sinking into her as his lips claimed hers again.
Ryn turned her head to the side, relishing the feel of his teeth teasing along her neck.
“Tell me.”
“What?” he murmured over her skin.
“Tell me we’re not just fucking.”
He stopped. Ryn clenched her muscles around him buried inside of her. The fullness stole her breath as much as the intensity in his eyes.
“We’re having intercourse.” A smile crept along his face.
Ryn dug her nails into his ass.
He teased his lips over hers. “Our genitals are having a play date.”
She bit his lower lip. He chuckled.
“I’m holing up for the winter.”
Snaking a hand between them, she squeezed a testicle.
