Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
He was still hard and inside of me. We both worked to breath. Jackson lifted his head and looked down at me. He brushed the hair off my face and studied me.
“Are you okay?”
I stared up at him. My heart filled with so many things. Love, desire, joy, happiness. I was more than okay. I was deliriously happy. I lifted my hands and pushed them through his thick hair. “Yes.”
His green eyes scrutinized me. “You sure?”
“Can we do that again?”
A smile grew across his face, his straight white teeth flashed. “I might need a minute.”
I watched him wince slightly and then he pulled out of me. He rolled off me, dropping onto his back beside me. My entire body was a mass of tingling sensations. My core throbbed. My legs trembled. Every part of my body felt alive.
I could not believe that I had just done that. I had just lost my virginity. My granny had always said that sex was special, and I should save it for the right person, but she had failed to mention that it would be the most intense, most incredible experience of my life .
“What are you thinking?” his voice cut through my thoughts.
I turned my head to meet his green eyes. My lips parted at the sheer beauty of this man. I had saved myself for someone special. Jackson was the most special person I knew, and I had no regrets that I had given myself to him.
“I think my granny would have loved you,” I said, blushing when I realized that he probably didn’t want to talk about my granny only moments after having sex.
He rolled over on his side and brought his hand up to my face, using the tips of his fingers to brush some hair off my face. “Oh yeah? Why do you think that?”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “You're a very strong person. I mean, you're mentally tough. So was my granny. When my parents died, she was as devastated as I was, but she just gathered me up and took care of me. I was a real mess, but she was strong.”
His fingertips traced down to my collarbone. “You were 16?”
“15.”
“You were just a kid.”
Our eyes met. I swallowed. “I wasn’t very strong. I was a complete mess after that.”
“Emily,” he said softly. “You survived something terrible. It takes a really strong person to survive something like that.”
“She used to tell me the same thing.”
“You miss her.”
“Every day.”
“Do you have any other family?”
I shook my head. “Both my parents were only children. All my grandparents are gone. It's just me left. I'm the last one left.”
“Who helped you when your granny left?”
I swallowed and shook my head, giving him a smaller smile. “She did.”
He studied me for a long moment. “Tell me.”
“She was diagnosed with cancer in my third year of University. And she asked me to move back home with her. She made an 8- page list of everything she thought I needed to know before she left.”
His smile was beautiful. “Like what?”
“Everything from how to manage my finances, how to cut fresh flowers to put in a vase, how to iron a blouse, how to properly set the table,” I gave a short laugh. “We had so much fun. She made everything so much fun. We laughed together so much that year.”
His eyes traveled over my face.
“She also planned every detail of her funeral, from what she wanted to wear to what music she wanted to play. She died four days after I graduated. It was like she had timed it, so it didn’t disrupt my exams.”
I smiled at him, feeling stupid that not only was I talking about my granny, but I was also now going on about her death. Wow. Sexy pillow talk. But the words kept coming out of my mouth.
“Every day for a month after she died, she had a handwritten letter for me.”
“Wow.”
“I was a bigger mess after she left than when my parents died.”
He picked up one of my hands and gently kissed it. “You're strong like her.”
I shook my head. “Not really, but some people tell me that I have her eyes.”
“Surviving is a sign of incredible strength, Emily.”
Said the man who had survived much, much worse than me as a tiny child. “Is that why you're so strong?”
He went completely still for a long moment. I reached up and cupped his face with my hand, knowing that I didn’t want to push him on anything.
He nuzzled his lips into the palm of my hand and gave it a soft kiss. His gaze met mine. “Want some birthday cake?”
I started to laugh. “What?”
“We have half a birthday cake downstairs,” his eyes looked at the clock. “And we still have thirty minutes of birthday left. ”
I giggled. “Yeah. I totally want birthday cake.”
He rolled over and tossed a t-shirt of his at my head. “You can wear that.”
The green t-shirt I pulled over my head enveloped me in his delicious smell. It was so big it came down to my knees. I watched as he pulled his grey shorts up over his hips.
“Come on birthday girl.”
In the hallway, I picked up the picture book off the floor of the wet dogs.
We made our way down to the kitchen. Jackson pulled the cake out of the fridge and cut a piece so big that he had to put it on a dinner plate. He pulled out one fork, and we sat at the island. I flipped through the book, laughing over the hilarious photos of wet dogs, while he routinely fed me bites of cake.
“Look at this one.”
“Are you sure that’s a dog? It looks more like a drowned rat.”
“Look at the ears on this dog.”
“I wonder if they’re coming out with a second edition, Wet owners giving their dog a bath.”
I laughed. “Next time we'll be pros.”
“Next time we can go for coffee while Chloe gets dropped off at the groomers.”
I glanced up at him, loving the way the word “we” so easily rolled off his tongue. I knew that there was no “we”. I knew that this was a temporary fantasy world in which he disappeared in seven weeks. I also knew that I had no place in his future and he had no place in mine.
He was watching me. “Why are you sad?”
I smiled and shook my head. “I’m not.”
“I could see the emotion cross your face. What are you thinking?”
I was thinking that I had finally found the kind of love that my granny used to talk about. The type of love that threw you off a bridge without wings, but at the last moment, he swoops beneath you and catches you in his arms. The kind of love that was so big, so real and so alive, it seemed to fill every single cell in your body. And unlike other people, my love had an expiration date on it. It was fleeting and would only last less than two months before it would disappear. I already missed him. This was real. This was happening. And it would never last. Like the day my granny told me she was dying, I felt the same sense of panic over the idea of saying goodbye to this man.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“More cake please,” I said, watching as he loaded the fork and fed me a bite. He watched me chew and then reached out and used his thumb to brush it across my bottom lip.
“Icing,” he said, before sticking his thumb in his mouth.
We stared at each other for a long moment and then I launched myself at him. He hauled me up into his lap so that my legs wrapped around his waist. His mouth devoured me. Left me breathless.
And then, I was suddenly being hauled up and tossed over his shoulder.
“Jackson,” I gasped laughing.
He was running up the stairs, taking them two at a time. And then he flipped me back on the bed and made short work of kicking off his shorts. His arousal was huge, hard and intimidatingly big. I gave a half scream-laugh when he pounced on the bed, landing on all fours, on either side of me. He reminded me of some crazy wild jungle animal about to devour his prey.
He looked down at me with an intensity that made my entire body shiver.
“You scared?” he growled in a low voice.
“No,” I said, my breath catching. Loving every dangerous second.
“You would be,” he said, as he dipped his head down and nuzzled my neck roughly. “If you knew what I was going to do to you.”
A loud pounding of someone knocking on the door sounded from below followed by the frantic barking of Chloe. I blinked as Jackson moved with speed off the bed and pulled on his shorts .
“Who would knock at this time of night?” I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice.
His eyes traveled down my body, “Don’t move. I'll be right back.”
I sat up in bed as Jackson disappeared down to the door. I heard the loft door slide open and then the sound of voices. I listened, my heart pounding. I couldn’t hear words, but I listened to the tone. Something bad happened.
A moment later, Jackson pushed into the room. He took a deep breath. “Get dressed. Matt’s been in a car accident.”
“What? Who was that?”
He pulled a t-shirt over his head. “The police.”
I scrambled off the bed, unsure what was happening. I found my underwear on the floor beside the bed. My entire body was trembling. “What did they say? Is he okay?”
Jackson stopped moving and turned to look at me. “They said it wasn’t good. They told us that we needed to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.”