Chapter Fifteen #5
I laughed. My spent cock twitched to life when Hallie moaned as I circled her clit. “Jasper,” she said, body shaking from oversensitivity, but I didn’t stop. Shifting closer, I applied more pressure and sucked her nipple into my mouth. “I can’t,” she moaned.
“You can,” I said, and watched her as her eyes fluttered, as her body built back up to coming again.
Only this time, Hallie met my eyes and never looked away as she broke apart.
Even as her legs widened, her clit swelled, and she cried out for the third time, back arching, only to collapse on the bed, completely spent.
“No more,” she said, then rolled into me, trapping my hand between her thighs. Hallie laid her cheek against my chest, and I felt something switch inside of me. Something move, like a displaced puzzle piece suddenly being found and slotting back into place.
I kissed the top of her head, stroking her dark hair, trying to wonder why the fuck she had such an effect on me, such a hold. I shifted, and Hallie looked up. “Oh, my gosh, Jasper. Your back. I’ve made you bleed!”
I didn’t even look, but I could feel the deep scratches. “Worth it,” I said, then lowered Hallie back to lie on my chest. My legs were hanging off the end of the bed, but I couldn’t care enough to move.
Hallie settled down on me, then played with the hairs on my chest. “That shouldn’t have happened again, should it?
” I hated hearing the dejection in her voice.
I held her tighter. I didn’t want to answer.
Because it shouldn’t have, but I was sure as fuck glad it did.
“Do you really have to leave tomorrow?” she said.
Hallie’s voice held a note of apprehension within it.
Like she shouldn’t be asking me to stay.
If anyone on this earth had the right to make me stay anywhere these days, it was this raven-haired, blue-eyed angel.
But I didn’t answer. Because, the truth was, I didn’t. But fuck . . . I’d decided to stay away, and now she was lying in my arms with my cum inside her. I was clearly shit at keeping my word.
“Jasper?” Hallie asked, and lifted up, resting her forearms on my chest so she could see my face. The hope I saw in her expression fucking felled me.
How much have you told her? Forrest’s words circled my head. She’s a twenty-five-year-old woman, she can decide for herself.
I ran my fingertip over her dark, perfectly manicured eyebrows, down over her high cheekbones, over a spattering of freckles on her nose, then to her full lip with a perfect bow.
Fuck, I had to leave. I did. But as I lay here right now, I couldn’t think of a single reason why I had to go. If I stayed on the tour, we could have this. Every night. I could have her exactly like this. But that was my selfishness talking.
The angel and devil on my shoulder argued, and I couldn’t fucking take it.
“Come on,” I said, needing to move, and lifted her off the bed.
I kept her in my arms as I walked us to the bathroom.
Setting Hallie down on a chaise longue that sat in the center of the large bathroom suite, I walked to the huge, jetted bath and turned on the taps.
Without looking back, I poured oils into the water and watched the vanilla-and-amber-scented steam cloud and billow upward.
When I turned around, Hallie was stretched out on the chaise, watching me.
She had a slight crease between her eyebrows, and I knew it was because I hadn’t answered her.
I bent down and lifted her in my arms. I went to move to the bath when Hallie’s hands cradled my face and she stopped me in my tracks. Her bright eyes searched every inch of my face, and she asked, “What’s holding you back, baby?”
The “baby” almost had me dropping to the floor and vowing I wasn’t going anywhere. I pressed a long kiss to her forehead, then lowered Hallie into the water, switching on the jets. I went to sit on the ledge, when she grasped hold of my hand and said, “Join me.”
Unable to say no to this woman, I climbed into the bath, slipping behind her. I pulled her against me, her back to my chest. Hallie sighed as she laid her head on my shoulder. I lifted my foot when the bath was full and turned off the tap with my toe.
Steam licked at our skin and the jets massaged our muscles.
I ran my fingers up and down Hallie’s arms until at last, she said, “Jasper?” I knew she wanted answers.
I felt a boulder in my chest when I thought of all I kept inside.
I had kept too much to myself for so long that it felt too heavy to endure.
I had taken on the burden as leader of my family .
. . and I was so fucking tired of shouldering all the weight.
Grief of my father still pressed on my chest, of Genny, of all the businesses, the threats . . . I was fucking drowning.
Hallie turned until she met my eyes. One glance at her had all my high walls falling, and Hallie was stepping straight over the rubble. I closed my eyes, then ran my hand down my face. “I’m trying to protect you,” I finally confessed.
Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. How and why are you protecting me? From what?”
A lump built in my throat at the question. My father’s face drifted into my mind, then the crash site and my father’s dead body on the ground before me. My hero . . . my favorite person, broken before me.
“What do you mean there’s been a crash?” I said into the phone.
I grabbed my car keys and ran out the door.
I’d been in a meeting that had run far too late.
It was cold and wet and freezing outside, the rain lashing down in torrents.
We were in the thick of winter, and the weather was harsh and unforgiving.
“Jas, it’s . . . it doesn’t sound good. The police have got in touch as you’re his next of kin.
They called here because they couldn’t get hold of you personally.
” Forrest’s tone was too soft, too filled with emotion.
“The first responders are at the scene. They’re trying to get him out as we speak. ”
I stumbled as I slipped on mud and righted myself to climb into my Range Rover.
The phone connected to the car’s speaker.
Forrest was still speaking, but it became white noise in my ears as I skidded out of the car park and hit the country roads that led home.
The wipers were on their fastest speed, and I squinted as I drove, trying to navigate the labyrinths that were England’s dark country back roads, made worse by torrential rain and lack of lampposts.
“Is he dead?” I found myself blurting, chest aching as I awaited the response.
Forrest was silent, and I felt my heart physically begin to crack. “I don’t know, Jas,” Forrest said carefully. “The police said they’d know more when they had got to him.” Forrest swallowed loudly. “The car sounds like it’s in a really bad way.”
A choked sound ripped from my throat as my mind conjured up what that could look like. My father, the man who raised me and the best man I knew, trapped in his car under a prison of rubber and metal.
“I’ll meet you there,” Forrest said. “I’m about ten minutes behind you.”
I hung up on Forrest without another word and drove more recklessly than I should to get to a car wreck.
But this was my father. I didn’t even remember the journey to the crash site.
The only sign that there was even an accident up ahead was the sudden flashing of emergency vehicle lights and the road closed off by the police.
I stopped in a long line of cars and threw my door open.
I didn’t even turn off the engine as I ran forward.
I pushed past the temporary barriers that had been used to close the road and shouldered past the policeman who tried to stop me.
I choked on a sob when I saw my dad’s treasured vintage Defender up ahead . . . or what was left of it anyway. Right now, it resembled a mashed-up silver piece of metal.
“Dad!” I screamed, as arms wrapped around me from behind. I didn’t know who they belonged to, but I threw them off me and made a rush for the car. But when I got there, firemen were cutting off the door. As one of them pulled it from the broken frame, I dropped to my knees.
“Dad!” I shouted again, but my body began to tire, all the life draining from me. Because when I looked through the crushed frame of the car, my father’s lifeless eyes stared back at me, blood marring his face. He was still strapped in the driver’s seat.
But he was gone.
My father was gone.
And there was nothing I could do about it . . .
I blinked back to the here and now as the memory played out in my mind, the smell of charred rubber, metal, and blood, and the feel of thrashing rain still so prominent in my mind.
Hallie’s hand was on my cheek, keeping me grounded.
I stared into her searching eyes, her open, kind, beautiful eyes, and I found myself saying, “I don’t think my father’s car crash was an accident.
” Those words seemed to slice right through the steam around us in their heaviness.
Hallie froze, lips parting in shock. Clearly, whatever she guessed I might have said, it wasn’t that.
I brushed a wet strand of hair off her shoulder.
Before she could say anything, I kept going, a dam broken down.
“We also believe Lady Dahlia was drugged in Saint-Tropez and Genny’s fall was orchestrated on purpose. ”
“Jasper . . .” Hallie said, shock and pain flickering on her pretty face.