Chapter 28 #2
I wanted to kiss him so badly, but I didn’t want it to be while he had a cloud of confusion in his mind from such a chaotic night. It wouldn’t be wise to complicate things before we knew where each of us stood.
“You’re probably exhausted,” I breathed, feeling my own breath ricochet off him in warm puffs.
“I’ve been tired for a long time.” He laid back down, facing the ceiling.
My head pressed against the pillow, I faced him, taking in his handsome features, the flexed muscles of his arms behind his head.
“For twenty years, I’ve held nothing but hate for my mother, and this whole time—” He closed his eyes tightly, and his jaw hardened.
“She didn’t want to leave me. She never wanted to leave me.
She told me goodbye and that she was going somewhere I couldn’t go.
” His voice broke, and a tear fell from the outer corner of his eye down onto the bed.
“I’m so sorry.” I moved closer to him, stroking his hair, unable to keep myself from touching him. My heart ached for what they all had gone through. To see the powerful man so vulnerable and hurt was shattering me.
He moved his arm up to wipe his eyes and grabbed my hand, pulling it against his warm, smooth chest.
“She brought you to me. I know it.” His dark eyes poured into me, heavy and full of emotion. “Without you fighting me to work on the conservatory, none of this would have happened, and I’d still hate her. I’d never know the truth about what really happened.”
My eyes began to water, and I was instantly grateful for the darkness of the room. “And you don’t hate Darius anymore?”
He was quiet for a second. “I don’t hate either one of them.
I’m still upset. My father did so many things wrong, but I’ve always considered Sowerby to be my dad and I think that softens the blow for me.
He gave up so much for me. I know now that it wasn’t my mother’s choice to leave me. She did the best she could.”
“What are they going to do about Darius? Do you think you’ll have anything to do with him now?” I asked.
“On the way to the hospital, he really came unraveled. He’s not doing well.
It doesn’t change anything that I went through or make it any better, but I don’t think he’s been okay for a long time.
In a way, I think things potentially could have been worse for both of us if he’d stayed.
I don’t know what’s going to happen between him and me but knowing everything that I do now… I don’t think I can hate him anymore.”
He shifted again, turning back to me and reaching his hand out to graze my arm.
“I’m sorry about the corpse flower, the garden, and all your hard work,” he murmured.
“Yeah.” I sank in on myself, torn with sadness and anger at what had happened to the beautiful plants.
“Everyone at Pinehurst is pretty upset. I’m still going to see if I can salvage some seeds or corms from the corpse flowers, but it doesn’t really matter.
I sold them the ghost orchid you gave me and quit. ”
He stilled. “Eliza, I know how important your independence is to you, but you don’t need the plants; I’ll buy the whole fucking botanical garden and fire every single one of their asses. Better yet, I’ll put you in charge and you can fire them. Say the word, and it’s done. You don’t need them.”
My heart flipped, and a small, odd-sounding giggle released out of me.
Never had I felt so protected and…loved.
I knew he would do the same thing for Katya or Leah because that was just the type of man he was, but still, I was part of something special, a family, and in a way, that meant more to me than anything else.
“I’m not sure why you’re laughing,” he said with a wide, gorgeous smile. “I will destroy them.”
“Don’t do that.”
When he didn’t say anything, I turned to look at him.
He lay on his side, staring at me hard, deep in thoughts I wish I could know.
I scooted myself closer and tucked myself against him, my head under his chin, wishing I could pause time and stay here forever.
“Eliza, there’s one more thing you need to know.”
I moved my head up on his pillow so I could easily look at him.
Slowly, he bent his head and softly brushed his lips against mine before pressing them harder against me.
Sparks shot through my body, and I pressed into the kiss, melting us together.
I felt his hand brush my hair away from my face, his actions so different from the possessive, rough touches like before.
Our lips pressed with need as though our lives depended on it.
Like if we separated, one of us would vanish forever.
The emotions deepened with every passing second until they swelled inside my chest. My hands moved and held his face, needing every inch of my skin to touch his and the safety of him.
He broke the kiss, pulling back just enough to pour his gaze into mine.
“I’m in love with you,” he whispered with a low voice.
If this is a dream, let me sleep forever.
He kissed me again with what felt like every feeling the world couldn’t hold.
“And I love you,” I breathed. It felt like someone had opened the cage door and I’d been set free.
When we kissed again, it was unrestrained.
Jasper’s hands slid up the skin of my back under my shirt, sparking a match and igniting my blood. My skin hummed where his hands had touched me—like his fingerprints had pressed permanently into me. His gaze dragged over my body like he was relearning every inch.
There was a calm in him now, but not stillness. Never stillness. Even now, in the quiet, his presence vibrated with intensity. He continued to touch me without a word, tracing the dip of my waist, the soft underside of my thigh. His fingers stopped between my legs, and he dragged them over me.
My breath caught.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t tease. Just watched me. Possessive and quiet.
“I want you like this,” he said, his voice low and even, like it was a simple fact. “Open. Soft. Mine.”
I trembled, but this time it wasn’t fear. It was the weight of everything unspoken between us. What we’d survived. What we’d become.
His hand slid higher, flattening against my sternum. He pressed down—not to hold me there, but like he needed my heart under his palm, like proof I was there.
“Lie still,” he said.
I froze, unmoving. I couldn’t—not when his tone sounded like a command and a promise all at once.
Jasper moved to sit back on his heels, his eyes devouring me. I still wore his T-shirt. He still had his boxers on. It felt almost obscene, the intimacy threading between us through cotton. The electricity between us was too much and not enough all at once.
He tugged the shirt up over my hips, slow and deliberate, revealing the skin of my stomach, the tightening nipples of my breasts, inch by slow, aching inch. I tried to sit up to help, but he pressed me down again with a single firm hand.
“No,” he said, his gaze pinned to mine. “Let me.”
He stripped me bare slowly, like he was unwrapping something sacred. When he looked at me, naked and breathing hard, something flickered behind his expression. Not softness, not exactly—more a deep, violent kind of need.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he asked, dragging his hand down my ribs, between my legs, spreading me open with his thumbs like I was something he was about to dismantle.
I whimpered as cool air hit my slick skin. Jasper leaned in, letting his breath ghost over me without touching, his lips so close to my clit it hurt.
“I’ll give you what you need,” he said, voice now ragged and hoarse. “But you’ll take it how I give it.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer before he ducked his head and devoured me. Slow, precise, and relentless. His tongue moved up my center with devastating control. He didn’t moan, didn’t praise me, didn’t break his focus once. He consumed me like I was the only thing keeping him alive.
My thighs trembled as my fingers clutched at the sheets. I gasped his name, and he only stopped when I came with a cry so desperate it fractured the air between us.
He looked up at me, mouth glistening, eyes dark. “Don’t move.”
He stood, removing his boxers with the same slow, deliberate restraint that made me ache. His cock sprang free, hard, heavy, and flushed dark at the tip. He stroked it once, watching me watch him. “Hands above your head.”
I obeyed. Chest heaving, my body slick with sweat.
“Good girl.”
He knelt between my thighs and pressed the blunt head of his cock against my entrance—just barely. My whole body arched for more.
But he didn’t give it to me.
Not yet.
Instead, he leaned down, kissed my throat, soft and slow, so fucking slow, and whispered against my skin.
“I want you to feel me tomorrow and remember this wasn’t just fucking.
” Then he drove into me in one sharp thrust with a force that knocked the air from my lungs.
Thick and deep and claiming. His cock split me open as my body took him with a desperate, wet sound that made his jaw clench.
He didn’t say a word at first. Just fucked me—slow and brutal, his rhythm calculated to destroy. He kept one hand on my wrists, pinning them above my head, the other gripping my thigh hard enough to bruise.
Every thrust hit deep, angling upward, designed to make me unravel, and I was close—so fucking close, already dizzy from the stretch, the pressure, the look on his face, like he was worshipping and destroying me in the same breath.
“I’m going to ruin this pussy,” he growled against my neck. “You understand me?”
I whimpered something unintelligible.
He pulled back and slapped his cock against my clit once, hard, then shoved it back inside, making me sob.
“You’ll think about this every time you fuck yourself,” he bit out, dragging his mouth along my cheek. “Every time you come, you’ll wish it was me. You’ll need it to be me.”
His hand slid down lower on my stomach while he kept fucking up into me.
“You feel how well your cunt takes me?” he murmured, voice breaking with raw heat.
I nodded frantically, tears slipping from the corners of my eyes. He moved, licking one off my skin. Just enough to break me open a little more.
“I want to see you fall apart,” he said roughly. “Right fucking now.”
Then he shifted, hooked both my legs over his shoulders and snapped his hips forward—harder, deeper. Every thrust a perfect, punishing drag along my most sensitive spot.
A scream tore out of my throat.
“That’s it,” he snarled. “Come on my cock. Let me feel it.”
I shattered into a million pieces. My orgasm ripped through me like a live wire, and Jasper didn’t stop. He fucked me through it—kept pounding into me, the wet slap of skin against skin echoing in the room, my cunt clenching so hard around him, I could tell he was about to lose it.
He yanked out suddenly and flipped me over. Pressed my face into the sheets, dragged my hips up, and slammed back in.
“Stay right there,” he growled, his hand fisting my hair. “I want to watch your back arch when I come inside you.”
I was a mess. Trembling and wrecked, panting his name. He thrust twice more, hard and deep, and then he groaned my name like it gutted him. His hips stuttered as he spilled inside me, his cock twitching with every pulse.
We stayed like that, both of us shaking, his chest pressed to my back, his breath hot against my shoulder. Still joined. Still one.
Jasper kissed the dip of my spine, then the back of my neck.
He whispered possessively, “You’ll never belong to anyone else.” His voice was low and destroyed, like it came from the deepest part of him.
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I just lay there—ruined and trembling, my thighs sticky, my breath still catching in little, helpless stutters.
Jasper pulled out, slow and thick, and watched the way his cum spilled from me, wet and glistening as it trailed down my thighs in lazy rivulets. A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“Fuck,” he growled. “Look at that. Still gaping. Still dripping for me.” He pressed his palm to the curve of my ass, spreading me wider, watching me pulse around nothing. “That pretty little cunt’s trying to find me.” Then—without warning—he shoved two fingers back inside of me.
My whole body jolted with pleasure.
I whined, high and overstimulated, but he didn’t stop, just held my hips steady, grinding his fingers deep like he could brand me from the inside.
“Breathe,” he commanded.
His fingers slid back between my thighs, dragging through the slick mess he’d left inside of me, then pushed deep again, two fingers sinking in slow. My hips twitched, still trembling from the aftershocks.
“You’re still open for me,” he said, his tone wrecked but controlled. “Still warm. Still mine.”
I gasped, arching as his fingers curled, working his release back into me with dark precision. It was obscene with quiet, focused intensity that made it feel like worship.
“Let me stay in you,” he whispered, dragging his mouth along my neck. “You let me in. Now you keep me there.”
My whole body clenched around his fingers, and he groaned softly, slowly fucking it deeper into me. When he finally pulled out, slick and shining, he lifted me effortlessly into his arms.
I didn’t protest, just curled into him, limp and spent as my cheek pressed to his chest and he settled us back against the pillows. He tucked one hand beneath my thighs, the other cradling my head, his grip possessive even in rest. His lips found my hair.
Just before my breath evened out, before my lashes fluttered shut, I felt the word against my skin.
“Mine.”
Soft. Final.
And this time, it didn’t feel like a threat.
It felt like home.