Chapter 32
Jodi Castle
“Nash, for fuck’s sake let go of me.”
Jodi dug in her heels bringing them both to a stop.
Nash had dragged her into the hotel corridor in nothing but another man’s T-shirt.
Thank God, they hadn’t encountered anyone, but it was only a matter of time and given the number of fans that had congregated outside, it was inevitable that some of them would have made it to the hotel interior.
She did not want her naked arse on the internet.
“Stop, will you? Just stop.”
He stilled. Finally. Jodi shook herself free of his grip and rubbed at the red mark around her wrist. “What is the matter with you? What is the fucking rush? I’m barely dressed. I’m not walking through the hotel like this.” She about turned.
Horrified, he gasped, “You’re going back to him?”
“All my stuff is in there. My bag, my phone, my knickers. So, yes, I’m going back. I’d quite like my shoes too.”
Nash, all pale goose-bumped flesh, did at least have all his possessions.
“Jo.”
“No.” She slapped away his attempt to pin her, which resulted in his key card winding up on the floor and his phone hitting a nearby door. “It was what you wanted. I was trying to give you what you wanted. To make up for...”
For what?
That he spent so much time watching Balin fuck random women... people? She’d learned from Lee only earlier that morning that Balin was doing almost as many guys as girls.
“We’ll talk once I’m dressed.”
They hadn’t shut the door properly behind them on the way out, so she was thankfully spared the process of having to knock, but she hadn’t thought about what she was going back to.
Rock Giant.
Still naked.
Still hard.
His head bowed toward his knees, while his fingers clawed at the crown of his shorn scalp. He looked up at her, jaw slack, his voice raspy, “Castle.”
Hope, there in his eyes mixed in with the desperation. That she’d returned to him. That she’d made a choice, a different choice, one that made sense of what they’d so recently shared. One if there wasn’t already a ring on her finger, she may well have made.
“I need to get my things.”
Devastation, again.
It brought tears flooding to her own eyes, making the search for her belongings even more difficult. Having failed to locate her underwear, she pulled on her trousers and picked up her bag. Her shoes were over by the hanging chair.
He watched her every move, making non-vocal pleas.
“I have to go.”
“Yeah.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“I get it. He’s your fiancé.”
That was right. Her future was waiting for her out in the corridor.
The prickly sensation under her skin seemed determined to convince her otherwise, that in fact, leaving was the wrong choice.
“I’m sorry.” Hesitantly, she reached out, pressed her hand to his head, half expecting him to shy away.
He pressed into the touch instead, creating an ache right through her core. “We should never have done this.”
He knew it.
She knew it.
Nash was out there fuming about it.
“Don’t say that. Never say that.”
“It was a mistake.”
Paul looked up at her, his eyes imploring, the green amidst the hazel luminous with woe. She could drown in that sadness. Couldn’t allow it to infect her more than it already had, or she would never leave. How could she leave?
She had to leave. She’d chosen to make a future with Nash.
“Stay with me.”
“Paul, I can’t. You know I can’t. I don’t want to hurt you.”
They were all fucking hurting.
“So, don’t. Stay.”
“I can’t.” She had to think about Nash, too.
And herself. She couldn’t tear her life apart again.
She’d done it once. Wouldn’t survive doing it again.
It’d hurt enough the first time, and then she hadn’t had the things she had now—a job, friends she adored, friends who meant more to her than her family ever had.
She tore herself away from him, her heart cracking as she did.
How when she stepped back it wasn’t throbbing in midair between them seemed fantastical.
“I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this. You don’t.
” He was so kind. So loving. So precious.
Absolutely deserved someone to love him wholeheartedly, it just couldn’t be her.
“This has to end, Paul. We have to end it. You can’t keep waiting for me thinking it’s going to happen.
Whatever you promised me, I’m freeing you of that.
I’m going to marry him. I made him that promise first. I gave my word. ”
“And we swore vows.”
Vows she could barely remember.
“In a moment of madness.”
“In a moment of complete lucidity. I meant every word.”
That was the hardest part, his complete sincerity. It rang in his voice now and seared her soul right through. She might not remember what she’d promised him, but she remembered too much of what he’d promised her.
“Paul... Please... I can’t deal with this. I don’t know how to make this right. I’m trying, and I feel like I’m getting everything wrong.”
That look in his eyes—adoration shot through with razor sharp pain, the glitter of his tears gathering—it was too much to bear.
“I love you.”
“You can’t love me. You can’t be in love with me. You can’t...”
His lips pressed to hers. Softly, if not entirely chastely.
“I am. Profoundly. I opened my heart to you that night and let you pour right in. You don’t understand.
I put it out there into the ether for the universe to answer, and it did.
It gave me you. Fate brought us together.
It did it the first time I asked, and I foolishly let you go.
This time, I’m hanging on and never letting go. ”
A tear slid down his cheek. Jodi raised a thumb to chase it away, but a second instantly fell, to replace it. Previously, she’d only ever seen one man cry. Her father the night he realised her mum had left. She wasn’t sure she’d ever recalled that before.
Something broke inside her.
“Please, please, don’t.” The more she wiped his face, the quicker more tears spilled to replace them. The salt taste of her own distress trickled across her lips. She thought she’d been the only lost soul wandering the field that night, but hearing him now, that hadn’t been the case.
She needed to fix this. Heal him.
She kissed his brow, meant only to kiss his tears away, but their noses bumped, and his breath whispered against her skin.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry.”
She kissed him again, and he kissed her back harder.
Goodbye, that’s what sort of kiss it ought to have been.
Only, it wasn’t a goodbye kiss, nor an it’s over kiss.
It was an I can’t take it anymore, I need this, and if I don’t have this, I’ll stop breathing kiss.
A questing battle of tongues and drowning sort of kiss.
A hello, there you are, I’ve finally found you, kiss.
“Castle?” He breathed her name right into her mouth, before enacting another collision.
His hand on the back of her neck, pulled him to her.
The other, in possession of her hip, soon glided to the small of her back.
When and how her trousers came off she couldn’t quite recall, but her head falling back, his hands beneath the T-shirt, him ripping it from her was crystal clear.
Likewise, his mouth on her breast. Him claiming one nipple, then the other.
Her pulse pounding in her ears. Her body awakening.
She touched him. Bit him. Wanted... Demanded more. Sensibility confined to the footnotes.
Their bodies fused together, in the way their mouths already had. It was wrong. Very wrong, while simultaneously, hopelessly, and impossibly right.
Afterwards, certain moments would remain crystal bright amongst the haze of clinging desperation. The sweep of his fingers along the lips of her split. His thumb on her clit, then dipping inside of her. The first feel of him hot and naked inside her.
His groan that accompanied that.
Riding him, forehead to forehead, looking him in the eyes the whole while.
The heat. The achy feel of him splitting her open. Begging for more. Begging that he give it to her hard. Him obliging.
“Castle, oh my God... Castle.” Her scoring her nails across his back and breaking the skin. Skin she’d later clean from beneath them post-midnight.
“Never want to let you go.”
“Don’t let go. Want all of you. You never need to let go.”
The tide of rising euphoria sweeping over her. All sense of control gone.
“You fit me so perfectly.”
That fuzzy warm feeling expanding... expanding. Reaching the precipice. Balancing on the edge, muscles pulling impossibly tight all at once. Then, toppling over with a long cry. “God, oh God!”
Him, right there with her, making similar exaltations.
Him, driving into her that last few times, even as his cock softened. Neither of them ready for it to be over.
The stillness that followed. The cold horror of having failed so catastrophically to do the right thing. Everything she’d sworn she’d never do. They’d done it.
Jodi brought her fist to her mouth but couldn’t prevent the unstoppable sobs from erupting. She bit into the heel of her hand, but it didn’t help. It didn’t wake her from the nightmare of reality. What had they done? They hadn’t done this.
Just a dream. Not the truth.
She’d wake in a moment on her bunk on the bus.
No awakening happened. She remained straddled across his lap.
Their bodies were still joined, and his hot skin pressed to hers. There was no option other than to touch him in order to break them apart. Everything was slick and wet as they did. His cock, free of her body, slumped against his thigh, wet and shiny.
No condom... No condom!
She closed her eyes to block out the image, block out the knowledge, even as additional panic alarms began ringing in her skull. They rang so hard it was difficult to hear him. Was he talking to her?
His hands closed around her upper arms. Steadying. Supportive. “Castle, are you okay?”
“No.” She gulped. Opened her eyes. “I was supposed to leave. I only came to get my stuff. I have to leave. This is... this is wrong. We shouldn’t have done this.”
Paul gazed back at her. Stoic. Silent. Heartbreak writ through his face.
“I have to go.”
She hauled the T-shirt back on. Pulled up her trousers, then bolted from the room with an assortment of items in her arms, some of which might have been hers. This time, she pulled the door firmly to behind her.
She’d made everything dozens of times worse. Catastrophically worse. How would either man ever forgive her?
She’d never forgive herself.
Stupid. You’re so fucking stupid.
She dropped half the items as she attempted to dry her eyes with her cuff. The salt tracks still made her skin feel tight, and the prickly sensation in her nose endured. Somehow, she put one foot in front of the other.
Nash was waiting just along the corridor, casually posed.
How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? She felt like she’d lived centuries in whatever time had passed. Did he know? Had he heard them? If not, he’d surely know when he looked at her.
Only, he didn’t look at her or speak to her, simply turned towards the lifts, leaving her to follow in his wake like a gosling chasing a swan.
They rode the lift standing in opposite corners.
Two levels down, their shared room was a mirror of Rock Giants.
Smaller, and with a single double instead of two side by side, and no egg chair or balcony.
Nash went straight into the bathroom and locked the door.
He came out again five minutes later, freshly showered, his lithe body wrapped up in three bath sheets.
She turned away from the window to face him, her nails now chewed to the quicks.
Ignoring her, Nash crossed to where their suitcases sat side-by-side on the luggage stand and began rummaging in his for fresh clothes.
Every layer he pulled on felt like an additional barrier being erected between them.
Usually, he took pains to iron out the natural curl that caused his dark hair to form uneven waves, but having rubbed it over with a towel, he didn’t even pull a brush through it before perching on the end of the bed to lace up his boots.
“Where are you going?”
Silence.
“We should talk about—”
He gave a huff through his nose. “Not sure what we’d say. I thought we were happy. I thought we had something. I really did, but since he turned up, it’s like you’re somebody else. I’m not sure I know who you are anymore.”
She could have levelled similar accusations at him. He’d changed, too, or maybe she was seeing him more clearly than she previously had.
“You can have the room.”
“Where are you going?”
He gave another snort. Okay, as if she needed to ask. Back to Balin’s room most likely.
“Nash, stay.”
He shook his head, while sucking on his teeth. “Nah. I can’t do this now, Jo. I need to...”
“What?” He needed to what?
He raked a hand down his pretty face. “Process. I need to fucking process what it means that my fiancée comes… You know what, it doesn’t matter.” Right by the door, he swung back around. “You fucking came, Jo. You came for him. Just like that. No effort. No nothing. And...fireworks.”
That was what had him rattled?
“I told you; we’d been together before.”
“Right. And I’m supposed to believe that he fucked you once in the murky days of your past, and that makes him the authority on what it takes to get you there. Nah. Nah, I don’t think so.”
“God, Nash, it’s not like it’s never happened with you.”
Maybe it would’ve been wiser to hold her tongue, because clearly, she’d said the wrong thing.
He took a hike straight out of the door, leaving her behind in the sterile, impersonal silence of their suite.