Chapter 25 #3
Jake doesn’t laugh. “Part of you is always gonna think I’m scum.”
“Nope,” I say firmly. “Have you already forgotten what you did tonight? Going out to the farm, risking yourself for all those workers? You’ve changed, Jake. You are changing. That’s all that matters, being willing to be better.”
The muscles in his shoulders loosen beneath my hands. He leans back against me, and I feel a quiet pride that I might be giving him some of the comfort he’s given me.
“Besides,” I whisper in his ear. “It’s really important to hold onto the fact that Tristan and I didn’t actually have sex. Because he couldn’t get it up.”
Jake snorts.
“Sad, I know,” I say in a mock-mournful voice. “But we all have our disappointments in this life.”
“That’s not your disappointment, baby. Tris always gets whiskey dick.”
“Oh yeah? How are you so sure? First-hand knowledge?”
“Nah,” he says, sounding a lot more like himself. “Hayley Dean told everyone after regional champs. Came out of the bathroom crying. Said she’d been working him over so long her jaw hurt.”
We both burst out laughing.
“Come lie down,” I say, so we climb onto the mattress and lie side by side, facing each other.
“I love you,” Jake says. “I meant what I said, I don’t give a fuck that you went there with Tris, except that he’s a backstabbing scumbag.”
I smile. “Thanks. I do want a fresh start, you know. From all of this. With you. Think we can do it?”
Jake nods, his grey eyes soft. “One hundred and twenty percent.”
We lie there for a while, tracing lazy lines over each other’s skin. Then Jake groans. “So, T-Bone’s back in town, ay? Think he’ll show at the reunion tomorrow?”
I nod.
He exhales through his nose. “How am I supposed to not king-hit him on sight?”
“Please don’t. I know he’s the worst, but he’s still Cece’s brother. And the father of her niece.”
Jake makes a sulky noise, but a smile ghosts over his lips, and I know he’s going to try and fuck me again.
“Maybe you can always tell when I’m lying,” I say. “But I always know exactly where you are on the ‘Daddy-Dom-to-Homicidal’ spectrum.”
He smirks. “I told you that you were a good girl from the start, didn’t I?”
“Keep it a secret?”
He nods, but his gaze sharpens, and my breathing speeds up. “Jake, can you do bad things to me?”
“How bad?”
“As bad as you want. I’m yours.”
Jake flips me onto my back so fast I gasp, my legs tangling in the sheets. His weight comes down, caging me in, a predator trapping his prey. One hand clamps around my jaw, squeezing just hard enough to sting.
“Look at you,” he growls. “Always mouthing off. Always running away. And now you’re here, flat on your back, begging for me to wreck your little pussy.”
I shiver, my chest rising against his. “Jake…”
His thumb presses into my cheek, silencing me. “You want it really dirty?”
“Yes.”
His face hardens, and his thumb presses between my lips, forcing them wide. Then he spits in my mouth.
The shock comes first. The sheer unexpected filthiness of it. Then heat floods through me, my cunt clenching. I moan, humiliated and turned on beyond all belief.
“Swallow,” he commands, low and lethal.
I obey. As my throat works, I feel tears welling in my eyes. Not because what he did feels wrong. Because it feels so disgustingly right. More perfect than anything I could have cooked up in my perverted brain. And I’ve cooked up a lot.
Jake watches me swallow him, his eyes burning black. “Good girl.”
A tear leaks down my cheek, and Jake slams his mouth over mine, kissing me hard. He forces my lips wider, devouring my every gasp as his hand slides from my jaw to my throat, pinning me to the mattress with a palm.
I arch beneath him as he grinds against me, loving the feeling of being immobilised. Trapped. That in the face of his strength, I can only lie here and take it.
“Yeah, you like being used, don’t you?” Jake rasps in my ear. “My filthy little whore. You’d let me do anything I want to you, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I gasp.
That earns me a hard squeeze of my throat, the pressure just shy of cutting off my air supply. It makes my head spin and my body throb. “More… Please?”
Jake’s free hand closes on my left breast, pinching my nipples until I whimper. Then his hand drags lower, knuckles skimming my stomach, teasing my landing strip. I tilt my hips upward, urging him inside me.
He laughs. “You want my fingers? Or my cock?”
“Anything. Either. Please?”
“Not good enough.” His hand tightens over my throat, and my vision sparks at the edges. “Tell me.”
“I want your cock,” I choke out. “Please, Jake?”
“That’s better. Not that it’s gonna get you what you asked for.” He plunges two fingers inside me. The stretch is brutal, as delicious as it is painful, and I cry out.
“Jesus, you’re soaked,” he snarls, curling his fingers until my hips buck. “You like this, don’t you? Being spat on? Getting choked? Having me stretch you open like a little whore?”
“Yes,” I sob, my thighs quivering. “I like it with you.”
“Good girl.” He leans closer, grey eyes burning into mine. “No man mattered before me, you got that? None of them. From this night until forever, there’s only me.”
His words press down harder than his grip. Freeing me the way the weight of his body did. I let what he said wash through me, stripping the past away. Tristan. NFR. Every man who ever had or hurt me before.
This isn’t just sex, it’s a rebirth. For me and for Jake. An unmaking and a remaking.
“Yes,” I sob. “Only you.”
“That’s right.” He fucks me with his fingers, pumping ruthlessly until my whole body lights up. “You’re mine. Every inch. Every thought. Every part of you.”
I want to look away, to turn from this too-big feeling, but I force myself to keep my hold on his burning eyes. “You belong to me, too. All of you. No one else. Just me.”
Jake stills, his face softening. He bends and lightly kisses me on the lips. “I was always yours. Every day. Every hour. Every part of me belongs to you.”
For a moment, we smile, then Jake’s nostrils flare, and he drives his fingers deeper. “We’ll talk later. Shut up and come on my fuckin’ fingers, Renaldo.”
I close my eyes, prepare for orgasm, but the second I get close, he pulls his dripping fingers free and shoves them in my mouth. “Taste yourself.”
I gag as I obey, sucking him clean, eyes watering from the intrusion and that same fascination that this man knows what I want before I do.
Jake groans as I draw on his fingers, the sound vibrating through his chest to mine. He draws his hand away and climbs on top of me, lining himself up at my pussy. “Open wide for me, Ada. Now.”
I spread my legs as far as they’ll go, and then he’s inside me, driving with a brutal thrust that forces the air from my lungs. As he works, his hand returns to my throat. “Mine,” he says, as he drives into me. “Every fuckin’ inch of you is mine. Got that?”
I can’t speak, I can barely breathe, but my body answers for me, clenching around him as we come, shuddering and swearing.
After seconds (hours?) of bliss we collapse side-by-side in a tangle of sheets, chests heaving like we just finished a marathon.
My thighs are twitching, my pulse hammering in my neck.
“You’re so good at sex,” I gasp, staring at the ceiling like it’s going to steady me.
Jake chuckles. “Right back at you, babe.”
He rolls onto his side and drags his tongue along my shoulder, lazy and possessive, like a lion marking its mate. “I love you. I know you’re scared, but this is it. You’re the one. You’re my missus. I’m your bloke, and we’re gonna have a long, happy life together.”
Heat rises in my chest so fast it feels like he’s choking me again. I bury my face in the pillow so he can’t see me smile. “I’m not being Mrs. Graves-Holland. Like, I cannot have that name.”
“No worries. I like calling you Renaldo. Beach wedding? Mountains? Courthouse?”
“You’re getting way out over your skis here, bud.”
“We’ll see.” His hand settles on my hip. “Speaking of which, look at me?”
I turn my head and find Jake smirking back at me. “Whatever Betty finds. I think we should head to the reunion together tomorrow night.”
I jolt upright, slapping away his hand. “What? Dude, why?”
“Why not?” He props himself up on an elbow. “No one’s gonna fuck with you if I’m there, and it seems like we’ve both got some axes to grind.”
“I know I said I wanted fistfights, but in light of everything, I’ve decided I don’t actually wanna watch you manslaughter our graduating class.”
“I can do more than just punch people, y’know?”
“Like?”
He leans in and whispers in my ear. By the time he pulls back, my mouth is agape. “That’s diabolical, Graves-Holland.”
“Sure. But what do you actually think? Wanna do it?”
“I think... I think you’re on,” I say slowly. “As long as you let me handle Tristan. At least at first.”
“Fair’s fair.”
I flop onto the pillow beside him, dizzy with hormones and a brand new revenge plan. “So, this reunion’s gonna be cooked, hey?”
“Sure will,” Jake says. “I can’t wait until this is over and we can just be a normal couple and do everything together.”
“Sap,” I say, though I hardly mean it.
“I’m proud to be a sap, if it means never being away from you again.”
My smile falters. “But what if things change? What if I don’t turn out to be who you thought I was?”
Jake’s thumb brushes my lips, his touch light but firm.
Seconds pass, and I start to get worried.
Then he kisses me, soft and then harder, like he’s answering his own question.
He pulls away and looks at me with that coal-black gaze that made my knees weak the night I agreed to go home with him at Stabbies.
“I’ll always love you,” he says. “Whoever you become, I’ll love them too. It’s you and me, baby. Forever. Sorry.”
“Hmm, well, at least you said sorry.” I roll onto his naked body to conceal the fact that I’ve started crying again. “I guess, worse things have happened to me.”
“Damn right they have.” Jake gathers my hair in his fist. “They’re about to happen to your pussy, Renaldo.”
I climb onto Jake and prepare to guide him inside me when his phone buzzes. I break away to reach for it, and he grabs at my hand.
“No chance.”
“What if it’s Betty? It might be important.”
Jake leans over to look at his screen. “It’s just Davis.”
“It still might be important! Answer it!”
“I’ll call him back later. He’s probably just freaking out ’cos Cece’s still MIA. Now…” He pushes my head downward. “Why isn’t your mouth around my cock?”
“This feels wrong,” I say, even though my mouth is already filling with saliva.
“It is. But I’m the man, and we’re in bed, and when we’re in bed you do what you’re told, don’t you?”
I’m not sure if it’s a power play that makes me do what he says, or just the fact that I want him so bad, but I wrap my lips around his shaft. But I’ve barely gotten started when a bang rattles the hotel door.
“Oh God,” I say, leaping backward. “Who—”
“Stay here.” Jake is out of bed in a flash, his face set. “Whatever happens, don’t leave this room.”
I pull the sheets to my chest, Thrasher, Shannon and Henry’s faces swirling through my mind. My former bullies have been circling all day, and they know I’m staying here. It’s not hard to think they’ve figured out which room I’m staying in.
“Ada!” Another pounding knock at the door. “Ada, are you in there?”
The tightness in my chest releases. “It’s Cece.”
“Christ,” Jake growls. “I was about to… I don’t even fuckin’ know. Want me to let her in?”
I bite my lip. I do, but God only knows if she’s here to make up, resume our fight, or slap me for almost banging her brother.
“Okay,” I say at last. “But, also, you’re naked?”
“Already under control,” Jake says, knotting a towel around his waist.
There’s another loud series of knocks, and I want to pull the covers over my head. Apparently, the drama is nowhere near done tonight.