Unworthy Of You (The Spring Rose Bay Series Book 2)

by K. L. Jessop

  “Come to me,” he orders.

  My breathing comes in short silent breaths with the vast sensitivity that’s building between my thighs. I slowly move towards him, the desire I see in his eyes no doubt mirrors my own. The heat from his body hits mine as I stand before him in only my red lace thong, waiting in anticipation for him to touch me.

  “I must apologise to you, Megan,” he murmurs. “Because I don’t think I’ve ever told you just how beautiful you truly are.”

  My heart skips a beat. He’s never told me that, and it’s not until I hear the words that I realise just how much I longed for them. He sits forwards, dancing his fingertips over the back of my thighs, and my eyes drift close. Shivers swirl across my breasts as he drags his lips across my skin. This man is my ruin, my everything, and I crave him so deeply.

  He exhales and rests his head against my stomach, wrapping my hips tight in his arms as though he’s afraid of letting go. My fingers lace through the softness of his hair. He’s struggling. The haunts tear away at his insides. I can feel them in his grip and it rips me in two at the thought of the anguish he conceals. I don’t know how much longer I can go on not knowing why his heart is so damaged. I need him to trust me.

  “I can’t be your mistake, Megan,” he breathes.

  “You’re not. You’re my answer.”

  He falls silent and his grip remains comforting around my hips as I wait: for what I’m unsure, but I know I need to calm my heart rate that’s fighting the battle of feelings that are beginning to engulf me.

  I look down as deep emeralds look up at me. “When I hear your voice, you ease my pain. When I’m with you, you erase it from my mind, and when I touch you, I can breathe.”

  I don’t have demons of my own—not in the way he does—but everything he’s just said I feel too. I want to call him my own. In my heart, he already belongs to me but the connection between us isn’t yet complete, all we have is this.

  “Then touch me,” I whisper. “Let me help you breathe.”

  He holds my gaze as he withdraws my panties, letting the thin lace fall. His tongue trails along my hipbone, sucking and teasing before marking me with a tiny bite. I whimper, each mark of his mouth that connects with my body, etches deeper into my soul. I’m weak and ready, my legs just seconds away from buckling.

  I’m pulled to straddle him, my weight now resting on my legs as my hands hold his shoulders.

  My skin tingles when his kisses my breast, valuing his time as his hand moulds the other. “Andrew,” I breathe. “I need to feel you.”

  Two fingers slide into my wetness. My head falls back, my lips part as he thrusts: slow, deep but influential. He watches me. Other than his fingers inside me and his free hand on my ass, he does nothing but lean back and watch. It’s as though he needs to witness every second of this desirable hold he has on me. “Do I make you feel good, baby?”

  “Yes.”

  He’s never called me that before; it makes me feel as though I belong to him.

  “Shall I go harder?”

  “No.” The tempo makes the soles of my feet prickle and my breath becomes shorter.

  “Everything that I touch turns to ashes, Megan,” he murmurs. “But when I touch you, I make you burn in a whole new way.”

  “I come undone.”

  His thumb massages my clit in the same rhythm as his fingers, magnifying the burn. I cry out, perspiration bubbling on my lower back and chest. Everything’s on fire: my core, the muscles in my thighs, my soul and my need for him. Everything. I’m in two minds whether or not to get him to thrust harder because it’s torture, but I want to remember this. I want to remember everything because I feel so fucking good right now.

  “I’m going to cum,” I gasp.

  “I know.”

  “Hard.”

  He grins. “I know.”

  I contract around him, coating his fingers and crying out as the pleasure rushes through me. I lower my head to his neck to steady my breathing as I hold the back of his head with my hand.

  “You’re amazing,” I say against his lips. Our tongues dance together as I kiss him with passion, lust and adoration. I kiss him with all I have, showing him with actions what I can’t say in words. He holds me against his body and stands, walking us out of the living room to my bedroom. I’m placed on the bed still recovering a little from my orgasm. He removes his jeans, and I don’t think I’ll ever get over the affect I have on him. Seeing him naked, his cock hard against his stomach, makes my inside turn to mush.

  I sit up when I catch sight of the condom packet between his fingers. Taking his wrists in my hands I look up at him. “You said when you touch me you can breathe.”

  “I can.”

  “Then feel me.” I hold his gaze. “I want you to feel me. I want us to feel each other.” I’m not usually allowed to have this kind of control when it comes to sex with him. In my past, I’d have been willing to please a man in the way I wanted and they’d allow that, but with Andrew, he’s the one that takes the lead. It’s him that wants me to feel good, but tonight, it needs to be reversed.

  I’m guided to the mattress as he covers me with kisses, nudging my legs to open, he teases my entrance.

  “That night when you kissed me at Amelia’s, that was the night my heart started beating again,” he whispers.

  “From that very moment, I’ve never wanted to be with anyone else.”

  He slowly pushes inside, both of us echoing a groan at the connection of each other the deeper he does. He finds my mouth as he and starts to rock us. He’s different this time, he’s not a rough as he’s been before but intense in a whole new way, as though he’s loving my body in the way I’m longing him to.

  “You’re so, beautiful, Megan,” he groans, entwining our fingers. “You ruin yet complete me.”

  A powerful surge of something unfamiliar flows through me, uncertain if it’s one of need or of something much greater, but my eyes glass and I have to fight back the tears. He’s engulfed my mind, heart and soul in the most breathtaking way, and I’m falling so fast I wouldn’t be able stop it, even if I tried.

  “Andrew.” I squeeze our entwined fingers as I crash around him.

  Two more thrusts and he fills me with his heat and in this moment, with his large frame over me, I’ve never felt so safe. So, protected. I remove my hand from his and hold him, wrapping my arms around him so tight. “I don’t think I can let you go,” I whisper.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  He kisses me as though I’m the most precious thing in the world, so delicate but laced with so much power, as though it’s taking every last fear from him. I would do that. If being connected like this can remove the hurt that suffocates him, I’ll do it. I will never let go. Sex with Andrew is the best I’ve ever had. His ability to make me feel overwhelmed with so many desires is mind-blowing, but this kiss tells me more. It’s a devoted sign of passion, an intimacy that connects two souls as one, and the way he’s kissing me now is more than my heart can take.

  He gently sweeps his thumb across my bottom lip and I notice his eyes change. I lightly trace my fingers across his jaw. “What’s wrong?”

  “There is so much I want to tell you, Megan, but I can’t. Not yet. Just promise me, I’ll always have you.”

  I’m unsure what he’s trying to say but I know what I want, and that is him. Even knowing nothing of his past, the way I feel for him means I know I can never let go. “I promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Andrew

  My darkness in life has now been transformed into what feels like hope. I haven’t been ending each day dreading the next and the anger that often supresses me has subsided, all because of her. The sexy blonde that stormed further into my life and enjoys walking around my house in the best inappropriate clothing a man could view. I like having her here. I like coming home to the smell of her presence and the significant signs of a woman in my environment. She’s made my house a home again. She’s made me feel t
hings I’d locked away many years ago, and I don’t want them to stop. The thought of not feeling brings a new fear inside me that I don’t wish to evaluate. She has rapidly become my first thought, my last at night and everything in-between.

  I love watching her sleep: she’s so pure, so perfect. Having her sleep on me feels incredible, it makes me feel whole, but it’s also another hurdle I have to climb to keep closing the distance between us. I’d give anything to sleep beside her but my past prevents me from getting that close. If I get too close, I lose them. If I get too close, she will see me for who I am: a man that loves too much and eventually breaks people into pieces. I cannot have that for her. I cannot have myself fall. The light which love brings can blind you, it never shows you the shadows it can create along the way; it’s better off locked away as it’s too painful when exposed. But with Megan, it’s as if my self-control has waved a big fuck-you, because I can’t control these emotions that are vastly building, and questioning what I truly want in life. And I’m starting to believe it’s her. She has blown my world apart in all the right ways, and I fear for her. I fear for me.

  I kiss her head and pull out from under the sheets, walking to the window as the moon shines through the drapes. Even now, I still kiss her goodnight and make sure she’s safe before I return to my room. It’s the same in the morning before she wakes: I kiss her strawberry-smelling hair and leave a coffee by her bedside. That’s something I always use to do many years ago, when a woman laid in my bed: show her my affection as her hair fanned out across the pillow. But Megan isn’t her, and she’s not in my bed. After weeks of sleeping under the same roof and getting to know each other’s bodies, she’s still rests in the guestroom, and that has to change.

  “Andrew?” she says tenderly, reaching out to where I’ve just left. I go to her. “Stay with me. Let me hold you.”

  “You can,” I say, laying back down beside her and resting on my elbow so I can watch her.

  “I mean all night, not just until I fall asleep.” she murmurs. My gut compresses. I turn my head to avoid her eyes concerned she’ll see the distress in them that her words have caused. “I know you leave me, even if I don't wake I feel you leave. I feel the hollowness, the coldness against my skin because I’m alone in a big bed where I want your strong arms around me.” She takes my hand. “I want to wake up and the first thing I see is you.”

  My chest is tight, my heart pounds against my ribcage and I’m on the point of running.

  “You make me feel safe, Andrew,” she whispers. “You make me happy.”

  I close my eyes at her words. No one has said that to me in a long time, if ever. I thought I’d never have the ability to make a woman happy again, but Megan has this way of breaking down my walls whether I want her too or not; it’s like her touch weakens me and I can’t fight anymore.

  She sits up and takes my face in her hands. The light from the moon glows across her face and the soft skin of her breasts. She shouldn’t be looking at me the way she is. I’m not the man she wants me to be. I’m the opposite:

  Tainted. Damaged. Unlovable.

  She deserves better than a man like me.

  “I can’t make you happy, Megan.”

  “Don’t say that,” she whispers.

  “But it’s true.”

  “I think you’re afraid.”

  I narrow my eyebrows. “Of what?”

  “Have you ever stopped to think that the real reason you push people—me—away is because you’re afraid of being happy? I don’t know what’s going on in your head or what you’ve been through in your past—and one day I hope you will tell me—but you hide yourself away for a reason, and I believe that that reason is because you’re afraid of being happy.”

  Talk about being kicked in the guts. She can’t get any closer to the truth than she already has. She clearly knows me better than I know myself.

  I’m trying to control the anxiety that’s slowly clouding my insides. I may not want to get that close and re-open another wound of feelings that’s still healing, but she needs this, she needs to feel wanted, so for that I need to push my feelings aside to soothe hers.

  I cup my hand on the nape of her neck and bring her to my lips for a sweet kiss. Placing her hands on my chest, I’m pushed back down to the mattress. She calms me: my heart is still racing but I’m more relaxed. Our bodies are now a mixture of warm skin and bed sheets, and Megan kisses my chest and pulls them higher over our heads, creating a glow from the moon to fill the space in our cocoon.

  My brows line. “What are you doing?”

  “If your head is covered and you close your eyes, then nothing can scare you, right?”

  A smile tugs at my lips with her remembrance.

  Fuck, can she get anymore adorable?

  “You’re beautiful,” I whisper.

  “So are you,” she grins, tracing circles over my chest. “You best not tell Lucas I called you that. He has a thing about a woman calling a man beautiful.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve no idea. I think he secretly has a complex because women seem to pay more attention to his genital area than they do his pretty face.”

  I chuckle. “Maybe he needs to keep it in his pants a little more then and show a woman there’s more to winning her heart than swinging it around.”

  “I can’t see that happening anytime soon, he’s been in Spring Rose five minutes and is already wanting to bed the waitress at Rock Waves. The man’s an animal.”

  “He’s the one in need of therapy,” I reply.

  “He needs a straight-jacket and a muzzle.”

  I love hearing her laugh: it warms my heart and brings a smile to my face. Sometimes I’m smiling so hard my face hurts. “What’s so funny?”

  “Why does my brother sneak into our conversations when we’re both naked?”

  “I don’t know but that shit has to stop.”

  She pokes me in the chest. “You brought it up.”

  I pull back to look at her, my grin still wide across my face. “How the hell did I?”

  “You said I’m beautiful.”

  “You are.”

  I kiss her head. It’s conversations like this that I adore. Megan has the ability to ease the dull ache in my chest like the fresh breeze of spring.

  She sighs and cuddles into me. “I see you as my big beautiful bear.”

  “A bear?” I laugh.

  “Yeah. A big beautiful bear: strong and powerful.” A light chuckle leaves her. “All big ass and often grizzly.”

  This time I poke her in the side and she squeals. “I’m not that bad.” My expression turns serious. “Am I?”

  She trails her finger along the dark scruff of my jaw. “No,” she whispers. “Sometimes you’re just misjudged.”

  I take her chin, tilting her head so she looks at me. She hardly knows the reasons for my damaged heart, yet I feel as though she understands who I am.

  God what is this woman doing to me?

  “Since I met you, I’m beginning to feel a little less broken. I just fear I’ll never be enough.”

  She smiles softly, placing her hand gently on my jaw. “Believe me when I say you’re everything and more.”

  ***

  I slept. For the first time in years, I slept until the morning. I slept soundlessly without nightmares and night sweats. I slept until I woke to have warm lips caressing my chest as my fingers laced in her hair. I’d forgotten what morning sex felt like. Why the hell have I been avoiding waking up to her?

  Maybe Megan is right: maybe I fear being happy and that’s why I push her away at night so I prevented feeing like this. Alive. Six years is a long time to stop myself from feeling anything but dead inside, blaming myself for something I had no control over. It’s just been an added emotion to the one I’ve felt since childhood. Maybe that needs to change. Maybe Megan’s the one that will help me.

  “So, what’s the deal with you and Megan? I knew there was something by the way you always looked at her,” Mar
cus says with a big-ass grin on his face. Megan practically forced me out of the door earlier to meet the guys for our ‘date night’. I wanted to stay with her but she was having none of it. She said she wanted a long bath and an evening with a bottle of wine.

  “And what look would that be?” I ask him. I know Marcus is aware of us, I’m just unsure who else, and the fact her big brother is sat beside me makes me more cautious.

  “Like you’re waiting to pounce.”

  “Like he hasn’t already,” Jack chuckles. “The girl has a permanent sparkle in her eyes.”

  A slam of a beer bottle hits the table beside me. “Are you fucking my little sister?” Lucas’ eyes are locked on mine; the strength of his stare shows his protection for Megan. I brace myself for a smack in the jaw.

  “No.” I lie. “I’m not fucking anyone.” I not going to back out on his burning gaze but on the other hand, the longer I look, the more uncomfortable he is making me feel. The man is unpredictable. He leans towards me and quickly replaces his stern look with an approval grin.

  “Yeah, and you also talk shit, because she’s told me that you are.” Laughter plays out around the room as relief leaves me. I smirk as Lucas adds. “One thing you should know about me and my baby sister is that she tells me everything.”

  “Is that, right?” I ask.

  “Damn right. I even know how big your dick is.” He swigs his beer. “And by all accounts it’s not that big.”

  Again, that strikes the laughter from the others, and I can’t help but laugh with them. “I know damn well that Megan is very impressed with the size of my dick, thank you.”

  Marcus sits forward. “Told you if you got to close she’ll make you hard.” He slaps me on the leg. “Congratulations buddy. She's a hidden gem is that one.”

  Lucas scoffs. “She’s also a pain in the ass.” He cups a handful of nuts into his mouth “Good luck for the future.”