My life for the past couple of years had been stationary, stagnant, filled with general content but no amazement.
And monotonous. So awfully dull.
I loved my friends, I loved volunteering, but I was bored.
Bored was better than scared though. After all the publicity my family stirred up over the years, attention made me jumpy, cautious, and gave me those panic attacks.
I had hidden the abuse of my childhood for so long, I didn’t know what to do when the blinding light had shined down on all my father’s wrongdoings. I was clueless on how to react because the person who did know what to do had been taken by him.
Or rather, she’d let him take her.
I struggled with that idea every day, that she’d chosen to give her life for the man who had been willing to take it.
I was standing in front of the man who had been willing to risk his own life all those years ago to save mine.
The irony of it all was that he also chose to make my life hell and not share the reason why with me.
Was I willing to give up my comfortable lifestyle to get someone out of my system? To get my life back? Or to ruin my life all over again? I couldn’t decide which question made the most sense.
This glorious specimen of a man stood in front of me, knowing he wreaked havoc on my body and attracted the whole female population, asking for two minutes.
Could I hold out for two minutes?
I honestly took time to think about it as I stared at him.
I took him in again, looking him up and down.
His shirt stretched over his muscles as he towered over me. I knew he felt my stare because his body shifted with my perusal, as if my gaze affected him. That was our chemistry though. The one thing I couldn’t deny. He and I were connected in a way I didn’t want to be anymore. I wanted to cleanse myself of him but didn’t know how.
Maybe he had a point. Maybe he needed to get me out of his system but I needed him as well if I was going to overcome what I’d turned into.
I could use him as my closure and he could use me in whatever way he needed.
Did I even really want to hold out for two minutes?
I thought of my room and of my mother as I gazed into his blue, determined stare again.
“Two minutes …”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence because he lunged to devour my lips, like he’d been coiled and waiting, like he’d prepared years for the moment.
The second his tongue touched mine and I tasted that familiar mint, I moaned.
His hands dove under my waistband and he groaned when he squeezed my butt. “Goddamn. Tell me you wear these shorts every night.”
I started to pull away to come up for air and to let him know my nightwear wouldn’t matter in the future.
He leaned forward into me immediately and grumbled, “My two minutes, Whitfield.”
My heart beat as fast as a bomb that was about to go off while his determined blue gaze stole the breath out of my lungs. “Jax, maybe this isn’t such a good …”
He murmured into my neck, “I’ve got a minute thirty, then you can finish that sentence.”
He bit into my neck, and I clenched my thighs as he sucked on one of my most sensitive spots. His hands slid to my hips, rubbing his thumb up and down, dipping in and out of my panty line to the same rhythm of his tongue on my neck.
My skin dampened as my core shook with need.
I started to pant, to sweat, to lean into him. All parts of my body responded to him just like he wanted. Except my mind. It balled up with every concern and doubt about our situation. It screamed to be rational and conservative, to protect myself.
Control, my sweet, dear friend, wrapped my fingers around the counter’s edge and helped me white-knuckle it like it was the last strand of hope I had at saving myself from imminent heartbreak.
Jax pulled back for a second, his time too valuable to waste and glanced at my hands.
That jaw of his ticked a bit and he smirked. “Peaches, I’ve got one minute.”
I swallowed hard and licked my lips.
“And if you’re barely restraining yourself now, you’ll be writhing under me, begging and moaning when I slide my fingers across that wet pussy of yours soon.”
His fingers hooked on to either side of my shorts and panties. He kneeled and ripped them down in one fast jerk. Then, he stared. “Still perfect,” he whispered almost to himself.
This was the way I needed to be handled, like he wasn’t worried. Like I could step up to any challenge he threw at me because he knew I was strong enough.
His right hand went to my inner thigh, and goose bumps popped up all over my skin as my eyes followed his hand sliding up my thigh.
Without warning, he plunged two fingers into me and leaned forward to suck on my clit. The explosion of ecstasy buckled my knees.
My control slipped as I let go of the counter. As he sucked me harder, my hands migrated to his hair, and he used his other hand to guide one of my legs up over his shoulder.
He nipped me and I whimpered, wanting all of him and more of the same at once.
His fingers worked methodically inside me, bringing me just to the brink, hovering right on the edge.
I rocked into him, trying to get more of something, more of him, more of what he was doing—anything.
He held back though.
I gripped his hair and pushed him further into me, moaning.
He pulled back instead, taking his mouth from my clit but leaving his fingers in me, working. “Two minutes are up, Whitfield. What’s it going to be?”
His words splashed over me like a bucket of ice cold water. I almost pulled away but he slid a third finger in and twisted within me, speeding up the pace.
I whimpered, “You’re an asshole.”
He flicked his thumb over my clit and responded with, “Beg me to fuck you, baby. I’ll make sure you get off here and in Roman’s bed over and over again.”
I rocked on his hand, not saying anything but trying so hard to get there.
My body wouldn’t listen to my mind. Wouldn’t stop chasing the orgasm it so desperately needed from the one man who knew everything it loved.
He tsked and slowed the pace of his fingers. He leaned forward and blew on me before looking up at me again. “Beg, Whitfield.”
I whispered it so quietly, I hoped my mind and old friend, Control, didn’t hear. “Please, Jax.”
“Louder.” He sped up the pace a little.
I rocked with it. “Please.”
He rubbed his thumb over my clit. “Keep it coming. Louder, babe.”
I did as I was told, rocking and chanting “Please,” like he wanted.
He licked my clit and fingered me like I wanted.
My first orgasm rolled through me fast. Bright spots blurred my vision, and I almost collapsed on him.
He didn’t let up though. He continued to work me, not giving me a break to recoup.
When I thought I couldn’t take anymore, he grabbed my other thigh, wrapped it around his neck, held my ass, and swung me up in the air to the other wall where my back slammed hard against it.
His face buried deeper into my core and he ate me out so good, I slammed my head back into the wall over and over again as I came, trying to dispel some of the nuclear orgasmic bomb that exploded within me.
As I slumped over him, he let me slide down his body and then carried me to Rome’s room, ready to throw me into his bed.
“I should probably wait to fuck you in my own bed.”
I smiled. “Like I said, Rome texted and said he was giving me time to work it out with you. He won’t be back tonight.”
Jax didn’t smile back. He just turned and headed back the way he came.
I wriggled against him. “Hey, you’re going the wrong way!”
“Nope.” He set me down a little harder than I expected he would and started throwing my clothes my way. “Put your clothes back on. We’re going to my place.”
I caught my shorts. “Are you kidding me right now?”
He laced up his shoes, “Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?”
“You are being ridiculous,” I practically yelled, frustrated that he was stopping our momentum. “I’m not going to your place.”
I shot my legs into my shorts and wiggled them up over my body as his head snapped up. “Don’t be difficult, Whitfield.”
I sighed up to the ceiling. “Jax, how can you possibly think I am being the difficult one right now? You literally have an empty bed and a willing woman to fuck you. Yet, you want to trek all the way back to your house?”
His whole body tightened at my words. “Just a ‘willing woman to fuck,’ huh? That all it is to you?”
“Isn’t that the way you just described this? Getting this out of our systems?”
He stepped toward me, taut, ready for a fight. “You fuck Roman in that bed.” He pointed toward the bedroom furiously. “You’ve probably fucked him all through this goddamn place.”
I didn’t deny it. I wasn’t about to go into specifics about how I’d cried to Rome over the weekend but hadn’t slept with him. I just passed out at his place.
Without giving any detail, I practically saw Jax’s blood pressure rise as his face reddened.
“I might blow your mind in his kitchen and mark you where he touched you,”—he slid his hand over my neck—“and I damn sure will make you forget every moment you thought he got you off. But when I take you again, it will be in my bed, on my terms, and without him giving us permission to work it out.”
“Why?” I whispered, hoping with all my heart that his words meant that he wanted something more than just getting each other out of our systems. My mind told me to be smarter.
“If I knew the answer to that, I’d tell you.”
I crossed my arms across my chest, trying to stand tall but knowing it came off as a protective mechanism. “Maybe we should wait until you have the answer.”
He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and squinted at me like he was trying to read my every thought.
I stared back, wanting to tell him this was all bullshit, that he should have never left, that him visiting my dad was bullshit, and we could have made it if he had stayed.
His squint turned into a stare I thought looked a little too close to sympathy.
I squeezed my eyes shut and in the next second, he’d swooped in and kissed me so hard that all the air whooshed out of me. He held my face as he devoured my lips like he was starved, and I met him with equal fervor.
Then, just as quickly as he’d moved in, he jerked back. I was gulping for air as he backed up toward the door, swung it open, and said, “My bed is coming. Until then, stay the fuck out of his.”
