Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ryan

I’m not calm.

I’ll be anything but calm until I’m holding Jessie in my arms again.

After calling a cab to bring me back to Philadelphia, I spent the entire ride telling myself it wasn’t useful to be hurt she’d left after finding the engagement ring. It was still on the counter when I went to drag her back to bed. I’d purchased the ring two Valentine’s Days prior, planning to use it every year, then choosing to bide my time instead, until she was ready.

I expected her to spiral and have second thoughts. I mentally prepared for this. Still, waking up to find her gone was a knife through the heart and I’ve had no success trying to dislodge it. Did I imagine the affectionate way she looked at me? The way she curled into my body, like she trusted me to weather any storm?

I will.

I will until the end of time. Even if I have to track her down, time and time again, to convince her of that truth.

I’m striding down the hallway to our apartment, keys in hand, and if she’s not home, I’m going to change and head down to the station. With Jessie preparing to commit armed robbery this morning, I didn’t have time to find her mother’s current address. But that is where I’ll search next if she’s not on the other side of this door.

I shove my key into the lock and lunge into the apartment, her name on my lips.

And I’m brought up short, struck silent.

There are candles everywhere, reflecting off the walls while soft violin music plays from the kitchen. The dining room table is set for two people, sprinkled with red rose petals, along with the floor. Jessie, my Jessie, stands in the center of it all wearing the red dress and high heels, her eyes wide and hopeful.

“Hello Ryan,” she says haltingly, her eyes taking on a sheen. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Vaguely, I hear the apartment door close behind me. I can barely hear a damn thing over the wild pounding on my heart. What is all this? What does it mean?

How soon can I touch her again?

I hate it when she cries. She needs me.

“You’re mad at me,” she says, misinterpreting my silence. “Of course you are. I would want to kill me, too.” She swipes at her eyes. “You were right, about my mother. I just needed to see it for myself—and I did. And I missed you horribly the whole time. From the moment I left the cabin. Because you’re not just my best friend, you’re…the man I’ve loved all along, aren’t you? You’re the best man I could have fallen in love with and I’m the worst possible woman you could have picked, but if you’re still willing to love me, even though I made you hide your true self for so long and then…stranded you at a cabin when you finally got enough courage to be honest, then I’m yours.”

She blows out a shaky breath…

…and kneels, knocking the breath out of my lungs.

There’s something in her hand I didn’t see before. A ring box?

My legs turn to water and I have to use the kitchen table for support.

“I’m asking you to be my husband. My permanent valentine,” she whispers, opening the box to reveal two gold bands. A thick one and a thinner, more feminine one. “I hope it goes without saying that I’m yours. Totally and completely yours.”

I move before my mind catches up on what’s happening, scooping Jessie off the ground and up against my chest. As soon as her smooth skin brushes me, it’s like being pinched to prove I’m not asleep. She is real. She’s real and she just proposed to me, right when I thought we’d have to start from scratch. I can barely fucking process my dreams coming true. This woman is mine. I get to worship her forever.

My heart is crammed up in my throat and all I can do is squeeze her tight, try to absorb the perfection of her.

“Is that a yes?” she breathes.

“Yes,” I growl, taking the rings out of her hands and setting them on the kitchen table, before finding her mouth with my own. Giving her a hard, slanting kiss while hefting her up, so she can lock her legs around my waist. “I can’t believe you did all this.”

“It was my turn.” Her eyes are almost dreamlike as she looks at me, her fingers busy in my hair. “And I wanted to. I want to do everything and be everything to you. The way you’ve been for me.”

“I love you. Being everything to you is my life’s work, princess. I crave it.”

I set her backside down on the kitchen table, upsetting the cutlery when I punch my hips forward into the juncture of her thighs, memorizing the sound of her moan. “It doesn’t feel like you’re mad at me,” she says in a choked voice.

“No, Jessie. I could never be. I was coming to find you. To remind you nothing will get rid of me. Nothing will make me any less—”

“Obsessed with me?”

“That’s right.” I lick into her mouth for a kiss, but when she tries to respond in kind, I bite her lower lip, making her whimper. “I hope you’re ready for everything that comes with being married to the man you’ve driven insane.”

“I am. I am.”

Wanting no secrets between us, nothing between us, I lift her off the table and cross the bathroom, setting her down beside the medicine cabinet against the wall. Maintaining eye contact with her, I remove it from its hooks and let her see the holes in the sheetrock, through which I’ve been spying on her for years.

I don’t know what I expect, but it’s not for her to moan and reach for the fly of my jeans. Her hands are shaking and I’ve never seen her so open, so vulnerable. She’s letting me see her naked need and my cock responds eagerly, hungry to fulfill it.

“Ryan,” she sobs, pulling down my zipper. “Ryan. Ryan. I can’t stop shaking.”

Instinct moves me. Instinct where this woman is concerned. My hand lifts and closes around her throat, carefully pinning her to the bathroom wall. “Shhhh. Talk to me.”

Her eyelids droop, her trembling decreasing little by little. “I don’t know how to describe it. Like I’ve been keeping my feelings inside for so long and now I can’t control them. I want you so bad it hurts.”

My lust is going to burn me alive if she keeps talking like this. “I know a little something about wanting someone so bad it hurts,” I say, my hand dropping from her throat.

“Show me,” she whispers, pulling down the bodice of the red dress and shoving it down her hips, to the floor. “Show me how you suffered and then use me to make it better.”

I have to breathe deeply and dig my nails into the palm of my hands to keep from grabbing Jessie immediately. But I adhere to her request and press my face to the peepholes instead, relaxing my hand enough to wrap it around my cock.

“My favorite time to watch you is after we’ve said goodnight. I’ve been hard for hours, hours, watching you giggle on the couch in your tight fucking yoga pants. Sometimes I spray your perfume on my left wrist and bite down on it while I beat off with my right.” I stroke myself now with rough jerks, grunting out loud as I’ve never been free to do while spying. “You wiggle around naked in your sheets trying to get comfortable and finally fall asleep. I think of what it would be like to sneak into your room and tease your mouth open with my cock…”

When Jessie gives me a seductive look and leaves the bathroom, reappearing in her bedroom a moment later, my groan rents the air.

I watch with escalating hunger as she lies down in her bed…and pretends to be asleep. Her hips are at an angle, back flat, eyes closed and I almost come at the implication of what she’s letting me do. At the permission she’s giving me.

It hurts to walk, I’m so aroused, but I tread slowly through the dark into her bedroom and skirt around to the opposite side of the bed. Her plump mouth catches the moonlight and precome beads on the head of my cock. Hardly able to believe what I’m doing in real life, not inside my head for once, I drag the wet tip of my dick along the seam of her mouth. She murmurs sleepily, but doesn’t open her eyes.

Heat inundates me at the sight of my spend resting on her lips and I can’t keep from kneeling on the bed, walking forward and pressing my cock closer to her mouth, like a secret offering. I gently tug down her chin with my thumb and slide just the head of my erection inside, resting it on her tongue. Ahhh fuck. My balls harden to stone and a ringing begins in my ears. I could come just like this, my dick dipping into her sleep-softened mouth, but with her body laid out in front of me, I know I’ve only begun to glimpse heaven.

Quietly as possible, I peel the panties down Jessie’s legs and lay down behind her, marveling over my hard cock being stroked this close to her naked ass. Imagining ropes of come sliding down the smooth cheeks and disappearing between them.

Maybe another time. Definitely another time. Right now, the need to breed is burning inside of me and I want my juice inside of her. I can’t stop myself from pushing her raised knee down on the bed, so she’s curled in the fetal position, leaving her pussy hole free for the taking. I lift her top ass cheek in one hand, guiding my cock to her entrance with the other, dipping the thick head inside and pulling it back out with a delicious little squelch, before sinking in as far as I can go. Ohhhh fuck yes.

I release a silent groan up at Jessie’s bedroom ceiling, carefully to keep my thrusts slow and measured so I don’t wake her.

Unfortunately, her pussy won’t stop getting wetter. It’s her fault I have to work my dick deeper and harder. She’s making me do this. The bed springs start to squeak and Jessie’s legs kick, her body starting to pull away from mine, telling me she’s awake. I do the only thing I can do. I roll her onto her stomach, pin her down and keep pumping. There’s no other option. My cock hurts to bad and she’s wet for it, isn’t she?

Part of me wonders if I’m getting too lost in the game we’re playing, but Jessie lets me know she’s playing it, too, when she gasps, “Ryan?”

“Lie still,” I grunt, reaching beneath Jessie to massage her breast. “Stop acting like you don’t want it.”

“I-I can’t believe you, Ryan.” She puts up the pretense of a fight, jerking and bucking underneath me. “Are you even wearing a condom?”

The wet slap of my cock entering her pussy answers that question. “Couldn’t wait long enough to put one on. Had to have this cunt now. Fuck, it was worth the wait.” With a final squeeze of her nipple, I release her breast and wedge my hand between her thighs, finding her clit with two fingers and fondling circles on top of it. “You love waking up to me riding you for broke, you little tease. Don’t you?”

Jessie whimpers and opens her thighs wider. “Ryan…”

The sound of my name in Jessie’s voice is like a fist around my heart. I forget all about the game then and align my body with this extraordinary woman who will become my wife, my mouth tracing up the side of her neck and burying in her hair. How the hell did I get this lucky? “I love you so much,” I rasp. “I’d love you up close. Or from afar. And my life would be fulfilled just for knowing you, Jessie.”

“From afar?” She tilts her head and smiles at me, her expression drowsily aroused. “And miss out on all the fun?”

My lips curl and I lean in, melding our mouths together with a kiss. “Did I mention I love you, princess?”

“I love you, too, Ryan,” she whimpers, before a climax wracks her body.

And I follow her soon after. I’ll follow her and love her forever.