Chapter 11 #2
I stop breathing.
He looks up at me once, checking, taking his time. Then his hands push my thighs apart and drag my underwear down in one smooth motion. The warm night air hits my skin, and then his mouth finds me and I stop thinking entirely.
He knows exactly what he’s doing. His tongue slides over me slow and deliberate, pulling a helpless sound from my throat while his hands hold my hips steady. Every time I move against him he drags me closer instead, patient and relentless at the same time.
By the time he slips two fingers inside me, curling them just right, my knees are weak and my hands are buried in his hair.
“Jake.”
It doesn’t sound like a warning anymore.
It sounds like begging.
“Please.”
“Please what.” His voice vibrates against my swollen flesh.
“I swear to God…”
He laughs, low, and the vibration of it makes me grip the railing with both hands. He thrusts his fingers deeper, his tongue working my clit relentlessly, and I’m so close, trembling on the edge…
And then he stops.
He stands slowly, dragging his mouth up my stomach, over my ribs, leaving wet open-mouthed kisses on my skin. He kisses me deep and dirty and I can taste myself on him, and that alone nearly finishes me. My nipples tighten against his bare chest.
“Tell me what you want,” he says against my mouth.
“You. Now. Stop making me wait.” My hips grind against him, seeking the hard length I can feel through his shorts.
He groans. “Yeah. Okay.”
He lifts me, hands firm under my thighs, and I wrap my legs around him, my back still against the railing. He frees himself, and when he pushes inside me, thick and hard and stretching me open, we both go completely still.
His forehead drops to mine. His breath is ragged against my lips. My fingers are curled into his shoulders, nails biting into his skin, and neither of us moves. Not yet. We’re just breathing. Just adjusting to the fullness of him buried deep inside me.
Then he moves.
Slow and deep and so fucking deliberate that I feel every inch of him, every thrust hitting the spot that makes my vision blur.
He watches my face. Doesn’t look away. His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise as he sets a pace that’s not rushed and not gentle and is exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
“Look at me,” he says. Low. A command.
I do.
That was a mistake. His expression isn’t triumph. Not satisfaction. It’s open and certain and so unguarded that I feel something give way in my chest that I’m not going to be able to put back. His ocean blue eyes are locked on mine, stripped of every deflection, every joke, every mask.
He drives deeper, and I stop worrying about what I can’t put back.
I come with my face against his throat, his name in my mouth, every muscle in my body pulling tight and then releasing all at once. My pussy clenches around him, pulsing, and I cry out, the sound swallowed by his skin. He holds me through it, his hands firm on my hips, not letting me go anywhere.
He follows seconds later, his whole body shuddering, my name rough in his throat. I feel him come, feel the hot pulse of him inside me, and I tighten my legs around him.
Then he just holds me against his chest, the scent of plumeria and sex in the warm night air, his heartbeat slowing under my palm.
He shifts before it steadies completely, his arms tightening around me.
“Come with me,” he says, his voice rough.
Before I can answer he lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist, my arms over his shoulders. He carries me across the teak flooring, his mouth finding the curve of my neck, teeth grazing the bruise he left earlier.
He walks us toward the infinity pool, where the water shimmers under the moonlight. He descends the steps slowly, letting the cool water climb my body inch by inch. The contrast is shocking against my heated skin, and I cling to him tighter.
“You’re insane,” I breathe.
“Probably.” He backs me toward the infinity edge, the Pacific stretching endlessly beyond. The water churns around us. “I’m not done with you,” he says against my mouth. “Not even close.”
His hand slides between us through the water, fingers tracing down my stomach. Every movement sends small currents against my oversensitive skin. When his fingers reach my thighs, I’m already arching toward him.
“Eager,” he observes.
“Shut up and—”
He slides two fingers inside me, and the rest of that sentence evaporates. His fingers curl with precision, finding that spot that makes my head fall back against the pool edge.
“Look at me,” he says, and my eyes snap open. His gaze is dark, pupils blown wide. Water streams down his face, and he looks like something that belongs to the ocean.
His thumb finds my clit and I jerk in his arms, water splashing around us.
“Jake, I need—”
“I know what you need.” He withdraws his fingers and then he’s lifting me, positioning me, and the thick head of his cock presses against my entrance. He sinks into me in one long, slow thrust that steals the air from my lungs.
He holds me there, hands gripping my hips. The cool current swirls around where we’re joined. Then he starts to move.
Each thrust sends water cascading around us, waves spilling over the infinity edge into the darkness below. I wrap my legs tighter and he hits deeper, harder.
“Fuck, Emilia.” His voice cracks on my name.
He hikes me higher, his mouth closing over my nipple, his tongue circling before his teeth scrape lightly. I cry out into the night. The rhythm builds, slow and relentless. He switches to my other breast, sucking hard enough to make me arch into him.
“Don’t stop,” I beg. “Please, don’t—”
“Never.” His pace increases, hips driving forward, pushing me back against the pool wall. He’s hitting that spot with every thrust now.
“Come for me,” he says, his voice raw. “Let go.”
I shatter. The orgasm tears through me and I clench around him in waves. He follows with a groan, his hips stuttering, hands tightening as he spills inside me.
We stay tangled together in the cooling water, our breathing slowing. His forehead rests against mine. His thumb traces slow circles on my hip beneath the surface.
Then he kisses my forehead.
Slow. Quiet. His mouth pressed to my hairline like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
I register it. Every defense I had for this situation, for him, for all of it, none of them accounted for that.
I don’t have a defense for the forehead kiss.
I don’t have a defense for the fact that it felt more real than anything else that’s happened between us since the beginning.
Shit.
At some point we move inside. I don’t remember deciding to. Jake grabs towels from the bathroom, drops one over my shoulders, and steers me toward the bed without a word. We don’t discuss it. We don’t discuss anything. He pulls me against his side and his breathing slows within minutes.
I can’t sleep.
I know the difference between sleeping and lying still trying to convince my nervous system that things are fine.
This is firmly the second one. The penthouse is quiet.
Poppy is in her room. Jake’s arm is a warm steady weight and his breathing has gone slow and even, and I’m lying here like an idiot cataloguing evidence like it’s going to lead somewhere useful.
The forehead kiss. That’s the problem. That one small, stupid, infuriating thing.
I go to do the math out of habit and I don’t even know where we are. Day forty-something. Somewhere I stopped counting and didn’t notice I stopped.
I’m in a shitload of trouble.
I feel him ease out of bed around six. Barefoot on hardwood. The bedroom door pulls halfway closed behind him.
Then his voice, low, from the kitchen.
On the phone.
I can’t make out all of it. His voice is low and tired and I hear him say Mom.
And then, in the quiet between whatever she said and what he says next, his voice carries through the half-open door.
“I don’t know how to let them go.”
He’s not talking about donor logistics.
He’s not talking about sixty days or the arrangement we made on a lanai because it was practical and contained.
I press my hand flat against the mattress and stare at the ceiling.
Them, he said.
Not her.
Them.
I think about the way he looked at me on the balcony. The way his hand settled on Poppy’s back at the hospital before he’d even thought to do it. The forehead kiss. The expression on his face when I looked at him and he didn’t look away.
I close my eyes.
I told him sixty days to be clean and contained. I limited this fake engagement so nothing could get out of hand. I built those rules because I’m very good at knowing where the lines are and not letting things matter more than they’re supposed to.
What I didn’t plan for was a man calling his mother at six in the morning and saying them.
Jake Hale isn’t pretending anymore.
And the most terrifying thing, the thing sitting at the center of my chest like a stone I have no idea how to move…
I’m not sure I am, either.