by Drew Elyse
I swayed, and it wasn’t that little shift that rattled you for half a second if you stood too fast, but faded to nothing before you attempted to take a step. No, this was room-spinning, vision-blurring, complete disorientation vertigo. Jack jumped to his feet to steady me, and I dropped my weight into his hold.
“Fuck. You need to get back in bed.”
He was probably right, but I wasn’t having it. Now that my mind had focused on it, I could think of nothing but the grime of being sick for four days on my skin. I couldn’t get back into bed.
“No. I need to shower,” I repeated.
“Babe, you can barely stand,” he pointed out.
That didn’t matter to me. The numbness was slipping. I needed to shower. It was all I could think about. I needed that. Just that one thing.
“Please,” I begged.
He cursed and muttered, “You'll be the fuckin’ death of me.” Then, more clearly, “Okay, we’ll get you in the shower.”
I didn’t protest the first part of that. I didn’t question the “we” in his acquiescence. I just said, “Thank you.”
I leaned on him the whole way to the bathroom, and even while he reached into the shower to turn it on. Compared to weak uncertainty I experienced from my body with every movement, he felt steady, secure. I’d once had that from him, even when I was at my best. I’d forgotten that. It was just another item on the list of losses. Still, experiencing it again, it was hard to believe I hadn’t missed that feeling every day.
While the water ran to heat up, he peeled off his shirt, then reached for the hem of mine.
“Jack,” I protested.
“Shhh.”
“Jack,” I repeated, weaker.
“Quiet, babe.”
It was the stupidest thing I could have done. God, I knew it. I knew it with a certainty rivaling anything I’d ever known, but I didn’t stop him. I went quiet and lifted my arms. Not a word as my shirt, shorts, and panties dropped to the floor. No fight when he threw his pants down with them. Not even a fight when I stepped into the shower with him right at my back.
My silence said it all. It broadcasted loud and clear what I would not say: regardless of the past, I would always give in to him. He was the wound I would open again and again, never learning my lesson.
He turned me in the spray so my back was in the hot water and my front was pressed against his warm skin. Even with all that, I shivered as his hands moved up my sides and cupped my neck. With a gentle push, he tilted my head back to wet my hair and grabbed the shampoo while I relished in the water running over me.
I couldn’t bite back my moan of appreciation when his fingers sifted through my hair, massaging the shampoo into my scalp. If I hadn’t learned better—read: if I’d never done it with Jack—I would have sworn having someone shampoo your hair was better than sex.
Of course, that was a very dangerous direction for my thoughts. I was already hyperaware of Jack’s body—warm, wet, and inviting. I didn’t need to think about what he could do with it. I didn’t need to think about certain parts…
Too late. I was thinking about those parts and noticed those parts were already thinking about me.
This is what Max is always talking about, the manic thought went through my head. This is what it’s like to need the D.
I was turning into a freaking crazy person. And why? Because Jack was hot and good in bed.
Oh, and, you know, the fact that I was still freaking in love with him.
Numb had been working. I really needed to go back to numb instead of feeling his hard chest and stomach—his strong, skilled hands. I needed numb back before my breathing went from heavy to all out panting.
Jack guided my head back into the water, rinsing the suds away. My breasts felt too heavy as my neck arched back. The water running down my shoulders and back started to feel like too much, like I was going to overheat standing there.
I was barely holding it together when he reached for the soap. The smell of it—of him—pervaded as he lathered it in his hands. It made me want to rub up against him like a cat and get it all over me, but I didn’t have to. He rubbed it into my skin, skimming every bare inch with his hands. Kneeling, he started with my legs, working up, up, up, until he went around the outside of my thighs and over my hips.
I was wet—not in a way the shower caused—and he’d made me burn to the point it was driving me crazy. He washed my stomach, around to my back, up over my shoulders, and down my arms. Then, he stopped. His face was hard, but I knew it was because he was doing all he could to keep control.
If I had any sense at all, I would have turned and rinsed myself. I would have given us both that out. Instead, I moved my hands up my own body, gathering the suds from my stomach and bringing them up to cup my breasts. I rubbed them, not caring at all about getting clean. All I wanted was to soothe the ache.
“Baby,” Jack growled.
I didn’t heed the implicit warning.
I held his eyes and kept at it. His hands were at my hips, and his grip hardened, the twinge of pain it caused only driving me higher. He was tense, his jaw looked like it might crack from the pressure he was applying, and his eyes were like fire.
Every sense screamed “danger” as I took him in—and I was goading him.
Then, in the span of a second, I wasn’t. He swung me around, pressing my back into the wall. The cool tiles sent a shock to my system and I tried to pull away only to hit his hard, caging body. My hands landed on his shoulders and he used the opening to take my mouth.
He was relentless with his lips and tongue, but my focus fractured from the onslaught when he shoved a hand between us and cupped between my legs. My cry of surprise was muffled on his tongue, his kiss not stopping for even a moment as two fingers curled up and slid inside me.
Jack didn’t move his hand for a moment, letting me adjust to the invasion. When the tease of being full without getting what I needed got to be too much and I rolled my hips, he took over.
I couldn’t move, wedged between his body and the wall, captured by his mouth and thrusting fingers. His other hand left me, and I could feel him jacking himself off. As much as I wished I could watch, there was no way I was moving. For the first time in years, I was right where I wanted to be.
He’d always done this to me. From the first kiss, he had the power to make my body ignite. I felt it building, rushing up and taking over faster than I could have expected, and I knew—at least with this—nothing had changed.
“Jack,” I moaned right into his kiss.
His lips moved infinitesimally away from mine. “Turn around.”
I didn’t want to. I was so close, all I wanted was for him to keep going. But then he pulled his fingers from me and the sudden, jarring emptiness made me cry out. I turned, fast, willing to do whatever he asked in order not to be left like that.
“Bend over for me, baby,” he went on.
I did. There was no use fighting it. He wasted no time sliding his fingers back inside me, the angle making it feel deeper. It felt dirty, illicit to be in that position with Jack fingering me while he got himself off, and I had never been more turned on.
“Oh, God,” I groaned, losing control of myself and pressing back against his hand.
“That’s it, fuck yourself on my hand. Get there,” Jack groaned.
His encouragement had my reservations flying out the window. I reared back against him, wishing it were his cock inside me, even if that was a horrible idea.
“Fuck,” Jack growled, his hips thrusting in time to his hand, his thoughts apparently the same as mine. “Come for me.”
It didn’t take long. I was close, and he kept speeding me toward that edge until there was nothing but the free fall.
The pleasure of it scoured through every inch of my body in wave after wave, until I could hardly breathe. I was only beginning to come down when Jack groaned, deep and primal, and the hot spray of his cum hit my back.
We stayed that way for a long moment
, coming down from the high. I waited for the self-loathing to hit, for the bitterness of reality to come crashing down, but it didn’t. Maybe it was a difference in me, not reality, but I couldn’t regret what just happened. Right or wrong, healthy or destructive, I still loved the man I married. I was thinking I might even love the man he was now from what I knew of him. There was almost no chance that was not going to go horribly wrong for me, that I would walk away from this unscathed, but I would survive. I had before.
For the moment, I was going to let myself enjoy what I could get.
I had no idea what was going through Jack’s head in the quiet extending between us. I was almost certain I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask. We both left each other to our own thoughts as he reached for the soap and washed himself from my back, then gently soaped between my thighs.
It was relaxing to let him care for me—too much so. With the release and lasting effects of my fever, it was all I could do to stay upright while he rinsed me, then walked me back to his room.
Not bothering with thoughts of how complicated things were becoming or how to deal with that, I climbed into his bed and said not one word of protest when he joined me. Jack shifted my body until my head was on his shoulder, my arm wrapping across his stomach by rote.
Then, without a fuss, I fell right to sleep.
I was awake long before Quinn, just like I’d been up long after she’d fallen asleep. I was up thinking about how I had everything I wanted. I had my wife pressed against me, sound asleep after I’d made her come apart for me.
I’d even come hard myself. The first time I’d gotten that in two years. It might have been by my own fucking hand again, but at least it ended without that empty feeling I had grown accustomed to.
With all of that, I should have felt great. I should have felt like a fucking king. I didn’t. I felt like the world’s biggest chump. It was all right there, all exactly as I wanted it to be—or close to it, just missing how I’d rather it had been my cock she came all over than my damn fingers—but none of it was mine to keep.
Quinn gave me that beauty, but she could, and very likely would, wake up and take it all from me.
Because I had fucked up. I’d made the biggest fucking mistake of my life two years ago, and now all I could do was hope I wouldn’t be paying for that mistake for the rest of my godforsaken life.
Even that sense of dread was better than the emptiness I’d felt laying beside her the last time before I left…
The sun was just beginning to lighten the outside, but our bedroom was still dark. I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t, not knowing what I had to do.
Quinn, my beautiful wife…she slept. She needed it after everything that had happened over the last few days. Things had settled somewhat, so she’d fallen asleep early the night before. I was glad she did. Still, I wished I had a piece of that time back. I wanted to hoard every second I had left, to suck everything I could out of them.
So, that was what I did, even if she was sleeping. I lay there all night, her cuddled against me like always, leaving only for a short while to pack the things I needed. I played with the soft strands of her hair, listened to the little rhythmic sighs she released, and looked at her beautiful face for as long as I could, burning every detail into my memory—even if they were already there in a way I knew I’d never forget.
Time ticked on, and I resented every fucking second. I hated how the fucking sun rose as it shone through the blinds. Soon, it would wake her. Quinn was an early riser. With the full night of rest she’d gotten, she would not be dragging. My time was up.
Every step from the bed, every second of getting my shit and forcing myself out the door, felt like they were chipping away at me. By the time I shut and locked the door for the last time behind me, I was nothing.
Without her, that was all I’d ever be.
I’d never wanted to go back there. Having even a piece of her again made me question whether I could even take it. But it wasn’t my choice. I was going to fight. I was going to do every fucking thing in my power to win her back. Until I knew, without a doubt, there was no hope left, I was going to keep going. But I knew, eventually, there was a chance I would have to concede. I wouldn’t force myself into Quinn’s life forever, not if letting her go was best for her.
Maybe we were already there. Hell, maybe I was right and leaving the first time was what I should have done, but I didn’t believe that. Not yet, at least.
Quinn stirred beside me and I braced. There was no telling how this would go. She could be pissed. She could take off. I hoped like hell she didn’t cry again. Fuck knows I couldn’t deal when she did.
She did none of those things. No, my sweet fucking wife nuzzled into my chest, and I saw one corner of her lips tip up in a small smile.
Fuck.
If I could have just that, just her close and smiling, every day of my life, I could be fucking homeless and still be the luckiest man in the damn world.
Knowing that, having firsthand knowledge of what I stood to lose, I spoke.
“The night before Damien’s accident, he and I got into it,” I told her. Her smile disappeared, but this needed to be said. She needed to understand, at least the parts I could give. “I knew he was drinking, but I let it happen anyway. And I let him leave. I swear, I had no fucking idea he would get behind the wheel of a car, but I still let him walk away when he was drunk off his ass.”
Quinn moved, still close to my side, but sitting upright to look down at me. I stayed put, even though it was hard. She’d been there in the aftermath. She’d been at the hospital just like I had when the doctors declared my half-brother would never walk again. And she knew it was only days later I left.
“You know how we were. Fuck, we never had a conversation that didn’t end in a fight. But I knew he’d been drinking even before I got there. I should have been the bigger man. I should have gotten his ass home and walked away, but I didn’t. I fought with him. I threw a fucking punch when he took it too far. Then, I let him walk out the door. I’m the reason he got in that wreck. I’m the reason he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”
She shook her head. “Jack, that’s not true.”
“It is. Fucking told me so himself.”
I saw the shock in her expression, the way she was ready to deny it.
Quinn had been friends with Damien. She’d known him even before she and I met, something neither of us learned until she was my wife. Damien and I had different mothers. He was the meticulously planned offspring of our big-wig lawyer father and his trophy wife. I was the mistake from one too many unsafe fucks our dad had with a paralegal at his office. When I was born, I didn’t get our father’s name—not that I wanted it. I was a Wieser, after my mother. Damien was the only Blackhorne boy.
My mom passed when I was sixteen, and Dad was all but forced to take me in, much to his bitch of a wife’s dismay. Not that I could blame Nancy, really. The asshole cheated on her and got another woman pregnant. I knew for a fact he made bullshit promises to my mom, said a bunch of shit about how he was tired of that life, how he wanted to take off with her. After all that, Nancy got stuck having her husband’s love child in the house all the time. That was fucked, no matter which way you sliced it. So she was a bitch to me, but I let that slide. I only called her a bitch at all because she wasn’t just that way to me, the bastard son. She was a bitch every minute of every day. The only time she took a break was when she was doting on her wonderful boy.
Damien got to be raised in the big house with all the money and two parents who thought he shit gold. He was set to take over for our father someday at the law firm. I was raised in a small apartment by a mother who never got another job as a paralegal after my asshole father blacklisted her. When I moved in, neither Damien nor I wanted me in that fucking house.
Problem was, Damien never left it at that. He inherited the asshole gene from our dad and made the most of reminding me how much I didn’t belong. He made it his life’s
mission to make sure I knew that shit, which was a wasted effort since I’d known it since the day my mother explained the real reason there wasn’t a dad in our little family.
It could have been that Quinn would never have known we were brothers at all if she hadn’t taken my name. Instead, Damien recognized my name right away the first time he saw Quinn after our wedding. And he wasted no time revealing the feud between us to her.
Just how deep that feud went was something I hoped I would never have to tell her.
“He blamed me, Quinn. That day I told you I wouldn’t be going back to see him?” She nodded, remembering when I’d said as much to her after stepping out of Damien’s hospital room. She’d even forgone going in to see him herself so we could leave. “He flat out said it was my fucking fault. Said he never wanted to see me again. Told me I was the worst thing to ever happen to him and his family and I would be the worst thing that ever happened to you.”
“Jack—”
“I shouldn’t have listened. I should have known he was lashing out like he always did. I should have let it go and moved on. Instead, I did exactly what he wanted and fucked up everything good I had. I fucked us up.”
I gave her that—gave her everything I could about why I left. Then, Quinn gave me way fucking more.
With those unique eyes on mine, she climbed into my lap. Her slight, soft hands came up to the sides of my neck, then she bent in and kissed me.
I didn’t take control, even as my cock hardened and begged me to. I let her play out whatever she had in that head of hers. If that sweet kiss was all she wanted to give me, it was more than enough.
My dick about broke free of the boxers I’d dragged on the night before when her tongue licked along my lips. I tried to ignore the sensation of her warm pussy with only our underwear separating us. I didn’t think about the soft swells of her breasts beneath my t-shirt she was wearing as they pressed against my chest. I actually convinced myself I could stay in control of the raging desire.
