Fight for Me: The Complete Collection

by Jackson, A. L.

  Hands caressed both sides of my face, and my eyes eased open to see the girl staring up at me. Her breaths short, so much evident in her adoring gaze. Words I wasn’t ready to hear. Really didn’t matter if she said them aloud, anyway, because I felt them when I dipped down and kissed her.

  Slow and tender, the softest kind of adoration on her tongue.

  Her fingertips slipped through my beard and found their way into our kiss, running over my lips. “I’m right here, Ollie. I’ve always been. Waiting for you. I can’t take it away, but we can hold each other through the middle of it.”

  I edged back, sitting up on my knees and bringing her with me. She straddled me where I knelt on the bed, this gorgeous girl wrapped around my lap.

  My dick strained, and my muscles ticked.

  I wanted to devour her.

  Inch by inch.

  I held her by the side of the neck, her pulse going wild against my palm. “Want to be right for you. Good for you.”

  The hint of a smile played across her lips. The girl so sexy.

  Olive skin and honeyed hair and freckled cheeks.

  Sunshine.

  She slipped down my body until she was resting on her knees. Our bodies swayed. A breadth apart.

  Her fingertips fluttered out, running down my shirt.

  Need raced my veins.

  She gathered the hem and began to drag it up, peeking at my face as she did. “You’ve always been right for me. You just need to accept that you are. That none of us are perfect. That the world is cruel, but it’s also given us the greatest gift.”

  She dragged the shirt over my head and dropped it at her side.

  A shudder ripped through me.

  Lashes of fire.

  That feeling again.

  Energy.

  “It gave us this,” she murmured so softly, hands tender as they pressed to the thunder at my chest. “Us.”

  A moan climbed my throat, and that was all I could take, and I was pulling that silky tank over her head.

  No bra.

  Those tiny tits perky. Nipples pebbled and hard.

  God. She would be my undoing.

  That moan turned to a growl, and I pushed her onto her back.

  She bounced on the bed and a giggle slipped from between her lips.

  “Beast,” she teased.

  My entire chest squeezed.

  Warmth and fire and need.

  My mouth went for the flat planes of her belly, kissing across the satiny skin, my hands winding in the hem of her skirt. “Don’t even know if I can bring myself to get you out of this skirt. Do you have any clue what you were doing to me all night? Looking like this?” I grumbled at her stomach.

  Vibrations of low laughter shook beneath my lips, and her fingers were winding into my hair. “I thought you told me the way I dressed was ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous how hard it makes me. Ridiculous how much it makes me want you. Ridiculous how much time I’ve spent fantasizing about peeling you out of those clothes.”

  Her laughter turned into a needy gasp as I started dragging off her skirt. I took her underwear with it.

  Sliding the fabric down those long, slender legs until every inch of her was laid bare.

  “Shit . . . ridiculous,” I hissed, letting a smirk climb to my mouth. “Ridiculous how gorgeous you are.”

  She trembled, and her hips arched just from the heat of my stare. “Ollie, I need you.”

  And I knew . . . I knew that I needed her more than she could ever need me, and that was kind of fucked up, but I couldn’t go on for one more second without her.

  She was everything. Everything.

  “So gorgeous,” I told her, the tip of my index finger running the center of her chest, riding down, across her trembling belly.

  I eased off the bed, standing beside it, watching her in the night as I shrugged out of my boots and jeans and underwear.

  Her lips parted and her gaze swept over me. Want darkened those indigo eyes.

  Lust and desire and something that was so much bigger than that.

  “You are what’s beautiful, Ollie. So beautiful. All these years, it’s been hard to look at you because I missed you so much.”

  Sadness tinted the words, and I knew it came from that hurt I’d inflicted. Years of rejecting us both.

  I reached in the drawer, quick to cover my cock, which was pointing for the sky, begging for her, before I was crawling back over her, between her thighs.

  Desire brimmed and boiled, threatening to blow.

  I cradled one side of her face in my hand.

  “Sunshine,” I whispered.

  Emotion thick, her face pinched, and her chest heaved with each shallow breath.

  I wanted to swallow every single one of them down. Keep them tucked away as a reminder of the way I felt at this moment. So I’d never forget.

  “Are you mine, Ollie?” whispered from her swollen, damp lips.

  My mouth brushed hers, tasting the words. “I’ve always been.”

  “Then take me.” She wound her arms around my neck. “Keep me.”

  A thunder lit up my heart, pulse raging as it careened through my veins, our bodies catching as I nestled deeper between her thighs.

  Her pussy slick and wet, my cock hard and ready.

  That beast she was always all too pleased to remind me I was wanted to devour her. Take her fast and wild and hard.

  There’d be plenty of time for that later.

  Tonight, I wrapped her up and nuzzled my face in her hair. My murmur climbed into the dense air. “You owned me from the first day that I met you.”

  She hooked her arm around my head, her perfect tits pressed to my chest, her body arching, begging for mine. “I had no idea that day that you’d become the focus of my life. The one I longed for. My whole life, all it took was a glance from you, and I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”

  Emotion clutched and clenched. I eased back a fraction, rubbing against the slick heat that burned between her thighs.

  The tip of my cock caught.

  Our breaths hitched, and our gazes tangled.

  For the flash of a second, it was like I felt everything snapping into place.

  Worlds aligning and spirits syncing.

  Us.

  She was right.

  Exactly the way it was supposed to be.

  She stared at me through the shadows, her lips parting as I pressed just the tip of my dick in to the silky welcome of her body.

  “Tell me this is what you want,” I grunted, holding back.

  “I want you more than you could ever know.” Her words struck me like arrows, and that was all I needed.

  I nudged deeper into her warmth.

  The girl so damned tiny that she was gasping and my jaw was clenching as I slowly spread her.

  Felt so much like the first time I’d taken her, when she’d cried out from the pain and begged me for more, and I’d held her and whispered that I’d love her forever.

  Didn’t matter that I’d only been a kid. Seventeen. I knew I’d never be given a greater gift than that.

  And somehow, this felt just as big.

  Because the girl?

  The girl was giving her trust.

  Even when I knew I didn’t deserve it. That I hadn’t earned it. But fuck . . . I was gonna try.

  “Shit, Nikki,” I wheezed as I took her by the caps of her delicate shoulders, trying to hold myself in check when this girl had always made me lose all control.

  She panted, her legs dropping wide, jagged gasps from her mouth as she adjusted to me again. Nails sank into my shoulders, and we both held tight until I fully buried myself in her body.

  Nothing had ever felt so right.

  “Are you okay?” I managed, propping myself up on an elbow so I could look down at her.

  Need prowled my spine, begging me to move.

  To take her right.

  Those eyes met mine, so intense, that feeling grippin
g, sinking all the way inside.

  She looked up at me like maybe I might be her sun, the way she was mine, her voice scratchy when she said, “You always take my breath away.”

  My forehead dropped to hers. “Fuck . . . Nikki . . . Sunshine.”

  She splayed her hands out wide across my back, and I was gathering her in my arms, getting her as close as I could get her. I began to move, measured rocks of my hips as I took her.

  Stroke after stroke.

  Friction and gravity.

  Her whimpers struck the air, and I held her, took her slow and deep while I kissed her like the treasure she was.

  While I cherished and adored.

  Because Rex was right.

  We never knew how many days we’d be given, and I’d already wasted too many.

  Her breaths came harder. “Please.” It was a prayer from her mouth.

  I shifted back to kneeling, taking her with me, and the girl began to ride me like that was what she’d been made to do.

  Motherfucker, if it wasn’t the most magical thing.

  Her body stretched out like a sensuous band, head tipped back, her tits in my face.

  Desperate hands yanked at my hair. I licked at one of those dark nipples, swirling it with my tongue and sucking it into my mouth.

  I pressed my thumb to her clit, winding her up.

  She whimpered, “Yes.”

  It was like the girl cast a single-word spell.

  Yes.

  She went off, an orgasm streaking through every cell of her body. Energy and light.

  She writhed on me, walls clutching my dick so damned perfectly.

  Taking every inch of me hostage.

  Held by this girl.

  The way I’d always been.

  Yes.

  Bliss.

  It exploded, splintering out.

  Blinding my eyes and battering my senses.

  I came with a shout that I released right at the center of that giving heart.

  She sagged her sweat-slicked body against mine, and I burrowed my face in the sweet essence that radiated from her neck.

  Nikki sighed, my name her breath.

  Couldn’t believe that I was holding her like this. I tightened my arms around her waist and held her as we drifted on that energy that swam around us.

  Soft, lulling waves.

  Comfort and all things right.

  Light.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  I’d give this girl my life.

  26

  Ollie

  “Someone has some explaining to do.”

  Couldn’t stop the roll of my eyes as I climbed into Rex’s huge-ass work truck.

  “You think I could at least get in before you start riding my ass? Might be just as easy to roll down your window and shout it at me where I’m standing on the sidewalk.”

  Drive-by style.

  When I’d gotten his texts at the ass crack of dawn, claiming that he needed my help with a project, I knew I was in trouble. Wasn’t like I wasn’t asking for it, mauling Nikki on the dance floor right in front of our friends before I’d dragged her off like some kind of madman.

  I just couldn’t hold it back a second longer.

  That band had stretched too thin before it had finally snapped.

  Rex kicked up a smirk that he punted my direction. “Pretty sure it’s not me doing the whole ass riding.”

  Punk had the nerve to waggle his brows.

  I shook my head, but there was no stopping my grin as I hopped inside his truck and snapped the seat belt into place.

  Rex pulled away from Olive’s, the diesel engine loud as he accelerated down the road.

  From the side, I looked at him. “So, did you actually need help this morning or did you just need to say I told you so to my face, sooner rather than later?”

  Low laughter escaped him. Totally at my expense. “Little of both, man, a little of both.”

  We headed out of town toward the old buildings on Row that he and Broderick would be turning into luxury condos and God knew what else.

  It still impressed the hell out of me that my best friend, who had been little more than a handyman, had taken the small construction company and built it into a massive enterprise.

  Each project got bigger and more complicated. Dude was leaving his stamp all over this small city.

  “You don’t have a crew for this shit? It’s barely nine in the morning, on a Sunday, mind you.”

  He kneaded the steering wheel as he made a right, hitting the two-lane road that led out of the north end of town. Taking another right up about half a mile would lead to the lower lake where we’d spent all our time as kids, and the old warehouses that lined the river up on Row were about a mile up from that.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know, your lazy ass always wants to sleep half the day away.”

  That was not the case this morning.

  This morning, the only thing I’d wanted to do was stay wrapped up in Nikki instead of leaving her naked and twisted in my sheets. The girl so damned gorgeous, all lit up in the emerging morning light.

  Rex leered over at me like the punk he was, pure suggestion bleeding from his words. “You do look a little tired this morning. Didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night?”

  I chuckled under my breath.

  Asshole.

  “Nah . . . didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night,” I admitted, fingers scraping at the seam of my jeans, needing to do something with my hands. Agitation and residual need clamored through me, leaving my insides scrambled.

  My mind was still trying to catch up with what had gone down last night.

  Thing was, my heart was already there.

  The girl inevitable.

  Should have known it all along.

  After we’d finally given in?

  It was on.

  Nikki and I had gone at it again and again. Hard and rough and tender and soft and every-fucking-thing between.

  We’d collapse in each other’s arms, drifting off for a half hour or so before one of us would, once again, be seeking the other in the night.

  Had taken all I had to peel myself away from her sleeping form when my phone had lit up with a string of texts, Rex prodding me out of that place that had become a sanctuary.

  “About time, man,” he said with a harsh shake of his head.

  Didn’t even know if I should deny it or play dumb.

  He was right.

  It was about time.

  “So, what changed?” he attempted, stealing a glimpse at me before he looked back out through the windshield.

  Trees hugged the narrow road, whooshing by as he wound deeper into the area where the woods became dense, giving way to the tall, thin, spindly trees that made up the forest that surrounded the lake and river.

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  Deflecting.

  Sometimes that was all I had because I didn’t think I had an answer for that.

  “Are you kidding me?” Rex laughed an incredulous sound and gave a harsh shake of his head. “You’ve been tiptoeing around this thing with Nikki for years. Don’t act like you haven’t wanted her all this time. Second she’d walked into the room, your spine would go stiff. Willing to put down bets your dick did, too.”

  I rubbed my hand down my beard, taunting him. “Looking at my dick now?”

  “You wish, asshole. They don’t make glasses that thick.”

  “Now who’s wishing?” I tossed back.

  Both of us laughed for a second before we fell into silence.

  “Seriously,” he prodded, “what changed?”

  Could feel him pushing, edging me a direction I wasn’t sure I was ready to go.

  I blinked through the protective anger that wound back through me when I really evaluated it.

  Yeah.

  I’d felt something coming.

  Something wicked and dark.

  But there’d been a tipping point.

  “Finding her apartment that w
ay . . . knowing she could have been in danger . . . that someone might have hurt her?”

  My teeth ground so hard I could hear my jaw popping in my ears. “It . . . brought everything crashing down. Turns out the punk had been leaving notes on her car, too. Just the idea of someone hurting her made me want to hunt down any fucker who even looked at her wrong and silence that threat forever. I guess that was the moment I realized I could no longer stand the thought of her being anywhere else than with me.”

  He blew out a strained breath. “So, this wasn’t you pulling any of that one-night bullshit? You know Nikki doesn’t deserve that, and you know she wants more than that.”

  He slowed and took a right onto the bumpy dirt road that wound down the hill.

  The glittering river stretched out below us, trees reaching for the sky like they were offering up prayers to the sun.

  In the distance, the roofs of the old buildings jutted up through the cover of the branches, a reminder that this area had once not been so desolate.

  My chest clutched when we wound around a corner that opened to a field of purple blazing stars that swayed in the breeze. A million memories slammed me. One after one.

  “This way.”

  “Follow me.”

  “We’ll be together forever.”

  Sydney’s sweet voice as she’d run and explored and looked at the world with so much wonder in her eyes. Nikki and I in tow.

  I pushed out a sigh. “Why do you think I’ve been ignoring it for so long? Last thing I want to do is hurt her. Makes me insane to hold something so precious and know that, chances are, in the end, I’m going to crush it in my hands.”

  “And why would you do that?” Wasn’t so much of a question as a challenge.

  I looked out over the landscape. “Men are prone to destroying beautiful things.”

  He swallowed hard. “Maybe. Unless they finally open their damned eyes and see that beauty for what it’s worth. Make the choice to build it up. Protect it and keep it.”

  Unease wound through me, and I swore my throat was closing tight.

  Didn’t want to go there.

  But Nikki deserved for me to.

  To stop fucking hiding.