Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3 - New Adult Romance)
Page 40
I looked up at him helplessly, my eyes filling with tears. I hadn’t really been aware of the effect the day had had, until that second. Not until he was looking at me, nearly naked. Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit. I felt—
I shook my head.
“It’s okay,” he said softly.
I shook my head again.
He brushed my wet hair back from my face with one fingertip. “It’s okay,” he said again.
“No it’s not. No it’s not!” I tore away from him, clutching the robe tight around me. All the old feelings were coming back, horribly familiar. I felt—
Dirty.
Tainted.
My dad had known this. He’d known that seeing those men again would reduce me to a wreck. That’s why he’d sent them. Even if they couldn’t grab me and make me miss the trial, they’d leave me unable to testify.
Ryan folded his arms around me, making shh-ing sounds. He stroked my back.
“Why are you with me?!” I sobbed. “I’m a mess! I’m a—”
“You’re the greatest person I’ve ever known,” he whispered. “And I’ll wait a lifetime for you, if that’s what it takes.”
And then he just held me there, as steam from my hour-long shower wafted around us and my shivering body soaked up his warmth. Until my tears stopped and I could meet his eyes again.
He offered his hand and I hesitated for a moment, afraid that it would bring back the memories of Earl. But his grip was completely different, warm and gentle and loving, even in its massive strength. He led me across the hallway and into our bedroom.
“I—I can’t—” I started.
“We’re not going to,” he told me simply. “I’m just going to help you relax.”
He lay me gently on the bed and I stared up at him, my breathing fast. Relax?! How the hell was he going to do that?! I remembered that time in the kitchen, when I’d still been Jasmine, ready to pounce on him and give him The Full Jasmine Experience. We were a long, long way from there.
He bent down and kissed me softly, letting his lips rest on mine for a full minute as my breathing gradually slowed. “Turn over on your front,” he said quietly.
I turned over onto my stomach, moving the pillows and turning my face to the side. I actually felt more comfortable, that way, because I didn’t have to meet his eyes. Don’t look at me, I thought, still close to tears.
His hands closed on my shoulders and I gasped at the sheer size of him, at the way his powerful fingers made me feel tiny. His thumbs started to stroke across my muscles, then pressed in deep. The muscles were so taut they were hard as rock.
His thumbs started to circle and probe while his fingers worked at the front. I closed my eyes.
It was the perfect treatment. I couldn’t have talked about my feelings, not in that state. And I couldn’t have let him touch me, sexually. But this was like a secret door into my soul, calming me in a way I’d never have thought of. I could feel my heartbeat gradually slowing. The soft toweling robe scrunched against my bare skin, absorbing the last drops of water.
I felt as if I was sinking into the bed, everything from my shoulders down to my toes gradually relaxing. After several long minutes of this, I was no longer shaking and my breathing had slowed.
“Can I take the robe down?” His voice was low, a bass rumble that came from directly above me. He’d straddled me, I realized, his knees either side of me. When had he done that? I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t trust my voice, yet. I nodded.
He reached around beneath me, moving as slowly and gently as a veterinarian trying not to startle a spooked horse. I felt the belt of the robe loosen.
Then he was sliding it down off my shoulders, revealing my upper back. Immediately, I started to tense up again. But he didn’t push it any lower. He just left it there and went back to work on my shoulders, this time skin on skin, and now every touch was a healing caress, his strength flowing into me. I could feel his eyes on my body and, after a while, I stopped twisting inside at the feeling.
Without words, he pulled the robe lower. I moved my arms down to help him, letting it slip down to my elbows so that most of my back was bared. Another twinge inside. Don’t look at me! I’m unclean! But his hands went to work again, stroking me, kneading my muscles, easing me down into relaxation again. Telling me that it was okay.
He put his hands on my arms, ready to slide the robe the rest of the way off my upper half. But he didn’t do it—he waited for me.
I took a long breath. Then another. On the third breath, I managed to speak. “They—”
That was all I managed.
He leaned in close enough that I could feel the heat of his words on my naked skin. “What they did to you didn’t touch you where it matters. It didn’t touch your soul.” He lifted my wet rope of hair and kissed me high up on the back of my neck, then laid a slow trail of kisses all the way down my spine to where the robe started. “You are the most beautiful, most amazing woman I’ve ever known and nothing they did to you,—nothing anyone can ever do to you—will ever change that.”
I realized that the sheet under my face was wet with tears. They’d been silently rolling down my cheeks as I cried the pain out.
Then he spoke again and it was in a way I hadn’t heard before. A way that I suspected no one had heard him speak before, not even his girlfriends before me. It came from deep down inside him, from his soul. “They saw you were a woman and they thought you were weak. But you’re going to triumph over them because you are ten thousand times stronger than they can ever be.”
I shook my head softly against the sheet.
“Ten thousand times,” he insisted. “Than they can ever be.”
I sniffed and finally opened my eyes and twisted around enough to meet his eyes. He was struggling with the words but, at the same time, they were rushing out of him from a soul-deep need. I hung onto every syllable because I knew he hadn’t ever spoken like this before, and he might not ever again. He was opening up to me on a level I’d never seen.
“I have loved you,” he told me, “from the first time I set eyes on you. You are burned into my mind in furious fire that can never be put out.”
Hope was tugging at the hurt and shame, trying to pull it away from me. I turned the rest of the way around. The robe was gaping open at the front, my breasts exposed, and I didn’t care anymore. I stared at him and he stared at me.
“You are my everything,” he told me. And I finally felt the shame lift away.
I flung myself into his arms and we hugged tight, and then we were falling back onto the bed with me beneath him. He looked into my eyes and ran a hand experimentally down my naked side.
I nodded.
When you look at a guy as big and strong as Ryan, sometimes it’s difficult to imagine that there’s a gentle soul inside. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine that he could understand a woman as well as he could—let alone a woman as fucked up as me. When I first met him, I’d made the same mistake. Now I saw how well he could read me—better than I could read myself. Given the choice, I’d have hidden myself away for weeks, months, before I dared to let him look at me again. But he’d known that he needed this now, before the wounds of the day could close up and turn into new scars. I needed to be healed before I was damaged again forever.
He kissed me on the neck and arched his back, pressing the whole length of his body against me, from shoulder all the way to groin, and it felt incredible. My breasts, still damp from the shower, were squashing against his chest, their wetness soaking into his shirt. My lower half was still covered by the robe but my legs had flopped apart a little and, between them, I could feel the start of a warm glow I thought would never come back.
He sat back on his knees and slowly pulled the belt of the robe out of its loops. He flicked the two halves of the robe apart and I lay there naked and trembling as he looked at me. The twisting inside had gone, now. I didn’t feel dirty, or tainted, or touched by them. I felt new. I just wanted to be his.
He pushed one hand down between our bodies and cupped my breast, his thumb caressing my nipple until it stood hard and aching. He lifted off me a little and slipped the other hand down between us as well, but lower, down over my damp stomach and between my thighs and—
I broke the kiss to groan as his fingers began to play over the folds of my sex. My groin rocked up to meet him and I felt myself open a little to his touch. The heat inside me was building rapidly, turning to moisture.
He lifted himself off me enough that he could gaze into my eyes. “I want to see you,” he said. And he held my eyes as his hands went to work, one at my breast, rubbing and squeezing, the other down between my legs. His fingers stroked up and down, twisting and circling over my throbbing bud, using my own juices as lubrication. Then he was entering me with one finger, thickly wonderful and knobby, sliding slowly deeper. His eyes never left mine as I gasped and panted and arched my back in response.
He began to pump me like that, while his other hand played with my nipple. Tendrils of red fire were licking out from my breast and meeting the heat that flowed up from my sex, but the strongest heat of all was coming from his gaze. His eyes were burning into me, melting me from the inside out. He was drinking in my response, my every shudder and moan.
He withdrew his finger and replaced it with two and I bent my knees, sliding my feet up the bed. He started a slow, insistent rhythm and I bit my lip. The soft web of skin between his thumb and index finger was rubbing back and forth over my bud and I could feel the heat inside churn and spin like clouds pulled into a hurricane. I could feel myself getting wetter and slicker around him as his speed built. I wanted him inside me but he seemed determined to do this first, to watch me as he—
His fingers twisted and pushed and I sucked in my breath, electricity arcing up through my spine. I started to jerk my hips on the bed in time to his thrusts, my ass grinding in circles. Molten, liquid pleasure started to flood upward from my groin, filling my whole body. He was staring down at me, coaxing me on with his eyes, persuading me to let go and be his, utterly his. And finally, as the heat overtook me, I did exactly that.
My toes dug into the bed. My pelvis pressed hard up against him, our bodies mashed together as I clutched and spasmed around his fingers. I felt the flush soak through me from my cheeks to my ankles. And this time, there was no fainting. This time, I was awake for every glorious second of it, staring into his eyes as I thrashed and bucked to his command.
When I finally stopped moving, he slowly withdrew his fingers. Almost before he’d done it, I was reaching for him to pull him closer. I needed him inside me.
He pulled off his shirt, revealing those full pecs and powerful shoulders, his body narrowing like an inverted triangle down to his waist. He stripped off his pants and shorts and I watched as he rolled on a condom, his cock already hard. It was bright, in the bedroom, and I could see every detail of that perfect body, from his chiseled abs to the straining skin on his throbbing cock, the tight curls of hair on his balls. I lay back, opening my legs a little wider.
He let out a groan as he entered me, a groan of pure pleasure the like of which I’d never heard from the guys who’d been just lovers. It was raw relief, as if he’d come home, as if, by joining with me, he was complete. And my own cry, as he filled me and stretched me, was just as heartfelt.
Our bodies slid together, his chest rubbing all the way up me, my nipples dragging along his chiseled hardness, and I went wild beneath him, my ass clenching tight and my breath catching in my throat at the sensation. His hands grabbed for mine and our fingers instinctively laced together. We held our arms out straight to the sides, our knuckles pressing into the sheets as he started to take me with long, smooth strokes, burying himself completely on each thrust. My world seemed to narrow down until it was just the feel of him against me: the press of his muscles against my breasts, the hard stretch of him inside me. I hooked my legs around his and urged him on. It was perfect—hot and gentle and loving and perfect.
And then it changed. We locked eyes and there was a shift in mood to just hot. Hot and primal. The hard globes of his ass were rising and falling between my thighs, his hips pumping between mine. He was hard and so deep inside me. Any thought that I might once have been made theirs was forgotten; I was his, irreversibly and forever. His.
My writhing became a bucking, twisting, screaming dance beneath him and I heard his pants turn to savage grunts. We came together, clinging to each other, as connected as it’s possible for two people to be.
Chapter 70
Jasmine
It was the first day of the trial.
We’d traveled to the hotel, just down the street from the courtroom, late the night before. Ryan had driven his car with me in the passenger seat and Karen and Connor in the back. Clarissa had driven Bartholomew with Natasha and Darrell in the back. And around us, in a growling, snarling circle, twelve bikers from Neil’s motorcycle club, including Neil himself. They were more intimidating than any number of police cruisers could have been. We knew now that we were being watched every time we left the mansion, but if my dad’s friends had had any ideas about trying something, they quickly abandoned them when faced with the bikers.
Darrell had, quietly and without being asked, booked out the entire top floor of the hotel. He’d given the bikers free rooms for the duration of the trial in return for them standing guard. With them sprawled in chairs at either end of the corridor, it was physically impossible for anyone to creep up on the three rooms in the middle where Ryan and I, Natasha and Darrell and Clarissa and Neil were staying.
Even so, I’d barely slept. Ryan had noticed, of course, despite my best attempts at pretending to snore, and had stayed awake most of the night with me, holding me and reassuring me. Now he was next door with Darrell and Neil, getting into his suit. Like Neil when he’d first met Clarissa, Ryan didn’t own a suit, so Darrell had put in some calls to his tailor.
And meanwhile, I was trying to decide what to wear. A suit? A dress? I’d tried on everything I owned and nothing felt right.
There was a knock at the door. I recognized it immediately. No one else knocked with that perfect, staccato rhythm, not even Clarissa.
I opened the door and Natasha was standing there, a garment bag in her arms. I was pleased to see her, of course, but my heart sank a little. The last thing I needed was another expensive gift.
She must have seen through my smile because she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t bought you anything.” She closed the door behind her and lay the bag on the bed. “Open it,” she said, stepping back.
I frowned and unzipped the bag. The blouse and skirt inside were familiar but I couldn’t place them, at first.
“First semester at Fenbrook,” Nat said. “I was going for the job in Flicker; you were going for the temping job in the office.”
“We both had interviews the same week,” I said, remembering. “But neither of us could afford anything to wear. So you said let’s pool our money and buy an outfit in your size and keep the tags on it—”
“—and it worked, I got the job at Flicker—” said Nat.
“—and then I took it back to the store and said oh no, I bought the wrong size!” I smiled. “The sales assistant looked at me like I was a moron because the blouse was so small—”
“But they took it back and you got your size and wore it for your interview and you got your job, too, because—”
“—it was the lucky outfit!” I said.
We both stared at it. Luck was exactly what I needed.
“I’m sorry,” said Nat out of nowhere. I turned to look at her. She took a deep breath. “It’s difficult to explain. I know
you think I changed. I got caught up in the lifestyle, the money….”
I shook my head. But Nat shook hers. “No, I did. I know I did. But I want to explain why. It was the change. I went from worrying about how I was going to make rent to worrying about how many people were coming to my garden party. I suddenly had six bathrooms and eight bedrooms and a garage full of cars and... I was afraid it was all going to disappear. If I looked up. If I even blinked. It felt like it was all a dream and if I stopped playing along, I’d wake up. I didn’t know how to be around you and Karen and Clarissa, anymore. That’s why I offered you money. That’s why I bought you the dress. I forgot how to be me.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know what that’s like.”
“But you snapped me out of it. When you told me about what had happened to you. I suddenly saw how you were all slipping away.”
I threw my arms around her. “We’re not anymore.”
“Damn right, you’re not.”
We rocked like that for a moment. For the first time in a long while, I felt like all the pieces of my life were coming back together.
After a while, I wrinkled my forehead. “Wait, six bathrooms? I can only think of five.”
“Oh, there’s another one off the dungeon,” she said absently. Then she jumped back from me, both hands over her mouth in shock.
I punched the air. “I knew it! I knew all billionaires had one!”
“We barely use it! Most of the time I just hang laundry on things!”
I shook my head. “God, I really am the only one of us not having kinky sex.”
“Don’t tell the others,” Nat said without much hope. She took a deep breath. “Anyway. I’m moving back in with Clarissa.”
“What?! Are you and Darrell—?”
“No no, we’re fine. But I think we moved too fast. Dating a millionaire is enough change for a while. Living like one is screwing me up.”