Just Jayne

by Ripley Proserpina

  I held myself there, inside her, until every last pulse moved through her, and then I held myself there because I was home.

  Jayne was my home. My family. My life.

  And I’d never let her go again.

  51

  Jayne

  Diego had lifted me into his arms and carried me to a bathroom. After a shower spent exploring each other, we’d tumbled into an unfamiliar bedroom and fell asleep.

  When I opened my eyes, I expected to feel him beneath me, in the same place he’d been when I closed my eyes. But he was gone.

  Another dark eyed man had taken his place. And he smiled when he saw I was awake.

  Grabbing my hips, Lee pulled my naked body over his and pushed the blanket away from my shoulders so I sat exposed in the early morning light.

  His gaze followed his hands as he skimmed them along my breasts and down my ribs to my hips. “You’re thinner than you were.” His voice was gruff. “You were sick a long time. Or you worked yourself too hard.” He glanced up at me and held my stare. “I couldn’t find you.”

  I laid my head on his chest and hugged his neck. “I’m sorry,” I said because I was. I was sorry they worried about me, and that I’d left them to be hurt and have to deal with Bree on their own. “I should have been braver.”

  “The bravest thing you could have done was leave,” he said, truth ringing in his voice.

  52

  Lee

  Jayne’s body trembled against mine and she shook her head. “It doesn’t feel brave.”

  “You want me,” I said, skimming my hand along her back. God, she was so thin. I could count her ribs and the bumps of her spine. The idea of her out in the world with no friends and no money scared me to death. Even having her safe in my arms didn’t dissipate the ball of anxiety in my stomach. But we had to move past this. “I know you do. I know you’re here to stay. But I need you to believe me when I tell you this, Jayne.” I took a deep breath before continuing and pushed at her shoulders so she could see me when I spoke. “You did the right thing. We never could have built a relationship on lies. You had no reason to trust us. It took us losing everything to see that. To come to terms with what we’d done.”

  Her hazel eyes were more green when filled with tears.

  “I love you, Lee,” she said, and my chest tightened.

  “I love you, too,” I replied. “Do you forgive me for lying to you? For telling you to trust me when I knew you shouldn’t?”

  She nodded and her hair fell around her shoulders.

  “Then let’s be done with sorries,” I said. I sat up and wrapped my arms around her. My erection was trapped between us, pillowed against her soft belly, and I groaned.

  She leaned back a little, moving her hand between us so she could grip me.

  “We’ll be done with sorries,” she repeated, sliding her hand down my length and then back to the tip. I groaned and pushed up into her hand. Her grip tightened, and I almost came.

  “Jayne…” I warned.

  She shifted, positioned me at her entrance, and then sank down on me. The feel of her clenching around me made me suck in a breath. I won’t come before she does. I repeated it over and over in my head as she lifted and lowered herself onto me.

  She was beautiful. Her skin flushed with arousal, her body lithe as her hips swayed with a graceful rhythm.

  Bracing herself on my chest, she closed her eyes and bit her lip. I’d never seen anything like Jayne. Never imagined myself falling for a woman like her.

  But she was utterly, entirely perfect.

  “Take what you need,” I said. As she let go, I would, too. I pulled her into me a little harder and felt my tip against the mouth of her womb. We hadn’t talked birth control, but the idea of spilling myself inside her, of filling her up and not letting her leave my bed until she was pregnant, made me even harder.

  My spine tingled, and I sucked in a breath.

  “I want to come inside you,” I said and her eyes opened. She stared at me, confused, and I pushed my thumb against her clit, rubbing tight circles against the wet nub. “I want to come inside you with nothing between us. I want a child with you, Jayne.”

  Her eyes widened and then filled with tears. “A family,” she whispered breathless. “A sister or brother for Sophie. A child for all of us.”

  I felt the moment she came. She clenched down hard on me, milking me with a slow, rhythmic pulse of her muscles. She trembled, and I jack-knifed as I came inside her. I kissed her. God. Had I taken her without kissing her? I was an asshole.

  She kissed me back. Her tongue swirled around mine, and then she nipped my bottom lip. “I missed you,” she said, drawing back for a moment.

  I held her head to mine, devouring her. I sipped at her lips, licked and traced their shape, all while holding myself inside her, even as I softened.

  “No one has been missed as much as you were,” I replied. Her eyes were soft and her skin dewy and rosy. I rolled us, slipping out of her, but held myself over her. “Think of how strong we are now. We’ve been through the storm, and come out rougher but not beaten.”

  “No,” she replied, wrapping her arms around me and holding me tight. “Never beaten.”

  53

  Jayne

  I joined my family, Lee’s hand held tight in mine, a little while later. Diego looked so much better than when I’d seen him just yesterday. His skin was glowing, and his hair was brushed and lay in shiny waves over his shoulders.

  “Your hair is longer,” I said, going to him to run my fingers through the strands. I leaned over to kiss his head and breathe in the scent of him. I let my cheek rest there a moment, and he slung an arm around my waist, tugging me until I fell into his lap.

  “Are you hungry?” Klaus asked.

  I looked around the kitchen. It was just the five of us. “Where’s Mrs. Foster?” I asked.

  “We gave her some time off,” Tennyson said. He sipped a cup of coffee and frowned. “She deserved it, though I’m not sure I deserve this coffee. What did you do, Klaus?”

  “I made coffee,” he said. “Now drink it. Or make it yourself.”

  I leaned over from Diego’s lap to sniff the mug. It looked as dark as mud. “May I?” I asked, and Ten shook his head.

  “I’d never let the woman I love taste something this bad,” he joked, but he handed it to me anyway. One sip proved that it was way too strong.

  I stood, cup in hand, and went to the sink. In a few minutes, I had a new pot brewing. Turning, I leaned against the counter to survey my family.

  Everyone looked… better. There was none of the heaviness that had pervaded their beings like yesterday.

  “You look better this morning,” Ten observed. Apparently it wasn’t just me who was taking stock. “Your skin is glowing. Being home is good for you.”

  The coffee maker beeped and I went to it, making him a cup of coffee the way I remembered he liked. As I handed it to him, I smiled. “Being with you is good for me.”

  Mugs rattled in the cupboard behind me as Klaus made his own coffee. He handed me a cup before taking a sip of his. “I want to know more about what you did while you were gone,” he said. He took a sip and sighed. “Sehr gut. Danke.”

  I looked around the makeshift kitchen. The hastily put together shelves. The plywood counters and bare bones sink. It was clean and organized but sparse. “I will,” I said. “But will you tell me where Sophie is?”

  The little girl had weighed heavily on my mind in the times I allowed myself to think about everyone. I hoped she was still with her grandparents, especially after her home was burned.

  Diego looked at the scarred wooden table, and scratched at his eye patch with his thumb. “With my parents,” he said. “Going to school with her cousins. I’m a horrible fucking father. But I couldn’t have her here. I didn’t want her to see me like this.”

  “Is she happy?” I asked. Diego winced and I almost wished I hadn’t asked.

  “Yes,” Lee said. “She asks
when she can come home, but she understands the house isn’t safe. And that Diego was hurt, but getting better.”

  “We can’t bring her back here,” Diego said. He studied the kitchen. “Sometimes, I don’t think this place is good for any of us.”

  “So let’s go,” I said. “The world is our oyster.”

  Ten laughed. “Finally! Let’s take advantage of our enormous wealth!”

  “Where would we go?” Klaus asked. He pulled out a chair, sat, and rubbed his forehead. Studying the kitchen, he began to nod. “That’s a great idea,” he said and then frowned. “I don’t know.”

  I stared at him, something was… off. Where was the decisive Klaus I was used to? The man who saw a path and took it.

  “Klaus,” I said, reaching for his hand. He took it and let me pull him out of his chair. “Let’s talk.”

  54

  Klaus

  Jayne led me out of the kitchen, down the hall and back to the room she’d found us in yesterday. Mrs. Foster had cleaned it before she left. I didn’t think Jayne had noticed, but we’d been fairly living out of that room since the fire.

  Half the time it smelled like body odor and frozen pizza. Not a good combination. We were all too depressed to take care of ourselves, and I hadn’t noticed what a state we were in until the sun—in the form of Jayne walking back into our lives—came out yesterday.

  I let her lead me to the sofa and pull me down next to her. But I didn’t expect her to swing her leg over mine to straddle me. Immediately, my cock hardened.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Something is wrong,” she said, canting her head to the side to study me.

  Here it was. I thought this would happen. She said she loved us, but how could she love me. Of all of us, I was the biggest liar. The biggest cheat.

  Because I had a wife.

  Our first kiss had happened while my wife slept above our heads.

  Not that I’d thought of Bree in those terms in years. In fact, the ink hadn’t dried on our marriage certificate before I realized what a huge mistake I’d made. But that didn’t negate the fact that I hadn’t divorced her before I set my sights on Jayne.

  God. I hadn’t been faithful to Bree while we’d been married, not after she lost all sense of herself, and not before. Bree and I… we were addicts and we’d fed off each other. She was my partner in crime, the one who normalized everything I did.

  Drink until I blacked out? Bree went shot for shot with me.

  Shoot up before a concert? Bree handed me the syringe.

  Fuck a groupie in a green room? Bree’d been sleeping with our manager for months; she didn’t care what any of us did.

  How in the world could I ever make up for my lies? No one could forgive me. I didn’t care what Diego said.

  “Tell me why you never divorced Bree,” she asked, and I nearly rocketed off the sofa.

  “No,” I said emphatically. I gripped her hips, ready to move her off me, but she rocked against me, a slight movement that had me swallowing a groan.

  “I won’t run away,” she promised. “Tell me the secrets that put those shadows in your eyes, Klaus. I’m not afraid of them.”

  “You should be,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. If I tell you what I’m like, truly like, you’ll run so far, so fast.”

  “Like I did before.”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on hers. “Like you did before.”

  She let out a breath, but didn’t get off of me. “The family I stayed with… there were two sisters, Ann and Charlotte, and a brother, Rivers. Rivers and Charlotte found me in Waverly Station and brought me to the hospital after I collapsed there.”

  Collapsed in a train station? I wrapped my arms around her to reassure myself that she was alive. She was too light, too insubstantial.

  “You were ill a long time…”

  She nodded against my chest as I stroked her back. “Weeks,” she said. “I slept, barely ate, slept some more. They lived in this tiny apartment, but let me sleep on their couch. When I was better, not contagious, and could move around, I volunteered at the hospital. I had no money. I kept putting off getting my bank card and passport. A few times I had legitimate reasons for it: I could barely make it upstairs, and I didn’t have money for a cab, and the Cynjins always assured me it didn’t matter. I made it up to them. My uncle, do you remember the one my aunt told me about? He left me some money. I gave some of it to the Cynjins, put some in a trust for a sick little boy named Charlie…”

  I had a million questions, but as her head popped up and she met my gaze, I forgot everything except how much I loved her. “You know—” She smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t even tell people my real name. Jayne Burns had her heart broken. So I was Jayne Rochester.”

  “Rochester.” She’d taken our name. I sat back against the couch, and she looked up at me. Her hazel eyes swam with tears. She blinked, and they trailed down her face, catching on her lips.

  I caught them with mine. Her lips were even softer when she cried. I cupped her face in my hands, holding her against me so I could lap the tears away.

  “Even though I did everything I could not to think about you, every time I said my name, I said yours, too. I made you part of me.” She glanced up at me. “I didn’t even realize until now I’d done that.”

  I knew what she was doing. She was sharing her secrets with me, so I could share mine with her. Her story didn’t hurt me as much as I thought it would. Ja, this mysterious uncle and money confused me. But more than anything, it scared the shit out of me, thinking of this tiny girl at the mercy of strangers, but inside her, my Jayne had a core of steel.

  She was a survivor.

  It was time for me to be one as well. “Bree was…” I thought about everything that she was, but I always came back to the same thing. “An addiction. A habit. She was like me—selfish, impulsive. A thrill seeker. Everything with her was about instant gratification, instant pleasure. For a long time, I was like that, too. I wanted to have as much as I could, as fast as I could. I didn’t know why we all fell for her. She wasn’t especially nice. Beautiful, yes, but so quickly she went from gorgeous to enraged.”

  A thousand events ran through my mind.

  “She was the first person we shared. It was crazy, thinking we’d all find one person we were attracted to. One person we could trust. We never could trust Bree, not even before we realized she was ill.”

  “Would you have married her if she hadn’t been ill?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so. But we were all so proud of ourselves. We tracked her down. Patted ourselves on the back because we’d rescued her. Even when you left, we were still patting ourselves on the back. We thought we had to protect her, but we were really protecting ourselves.”

  Jayne arched an eyebrow, and I laughed. It was so good to see her and to watch her emotions play over her face. She hid nothing. This was our Jayne. Honest.

  Lovely.

  “I love you,” I whispered. I couldn’t look at her when I said it because I was afraid I’d see pity on her face. “I should have told you about her. I should have done a thousand things. But I love you.”

  “I love you,” she replied, lifting my chin with two fingers.

  I held her against me as I moved her onto her back. Her legs tightened around my hips and I rolled my erection against her.

  “Will you be my wife?” I asked. “I want to marry you.”

  “I want to marry you,” she said, but glanced over my shoulder toward the door. “But I want to marry all of you.”

  We couldn’t give her that though. Only one of us could legally marry her.

  “Here’s the thing, Klaus,” she said. “I don’t need a piece of paper to feel married to you. I will commit myself to you before the world, and whatever being you believe in, but I don’t need to marry you to do that.”

  She was right. “I want to call you my wife,” I said.

  “So call me your wife,” she repli
ed, that same eyebrow lifting. “Call me anything you want. In your heart. In my heart. We are married. We are a family. Fuck the rest of the world.”

  I kissed her. Moving my tongue against hers slowly, I memorized her taste all over again. Soon we were both breathless, and tearing at each other’s clothes. She laughed as I ripped the t-shirt over her shoulder so I could kiss her pale skin and bite my way to her neck.

  And I gasped when she shoved the zipper of my jeans down to grip me in her fist and position me at her entrance.

  Our lovemaking wasn’t smooth and full of long, lingering gazes. It was fast and rough and filled with groans and laughter. I got one pant leg off of her, pushed her underwear to one side, and rammed myself inside her.

  We worked ourselves into a frenzy. The sound of skin slapping against skin filled the room, and it was the hottest thing I’d ever heard.

  Jayne came fast and hard, clenching down around my dick, milking my orgasm out of me.

  I came with a growl. I shoved myself inside her, holding myself as deep as I could get, emptying every last drop of release I had.

  The sun suddenly pierced the clouds and a beam of sunshine fell across Jayne’s face. She looked like an angel.

  My angel.

  “Oregon,” I said, and she giggled.

  “What?”

  “We should move to Oregon. Close to Diego’s family, but with the cloud cover of England.” I propped myself up on my elbows and smoothed my thumbs over her eyebrows. “What do you think?”

  She smiled. “Let’s move to Oregon.”

  55

  Jayne