Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
jade
Friday night, I get into a cab to head to Reeve’s hotel.
I’m raw and emotional and not even sure what the emotions are, only that they’re churning just below the surface and threatening to spill.
When the driver finds out it’s my first time in New York since I was a kid, he says he hopes it lives up to my expectations, and I almost cry at his kindness.
I feel myself break as soon as Reeve opens his hotel room door for me.
All my tender spots squeeze tight at the sight of him, and I have to swallow back tears.
He’s still in his suit from the media event, and immediately I think, I fucking love him.
His silver tie hangs loose around his neck, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the smooth expanse of his forearms. I’m already breathless.
An image flashes across my mind of the first time I saw him walk into the restaurant, looking perfect in his shirt and tie.
He was so beautiful and I hated him so much—at least I thought I did. Life can change with one single look.
He draws me into the room and smiles a slow, docile smile. “You’re here.”
I nod. “I’m here. I can’t really believe it; it’s been the strangest day. But I’m here.”
“I needed you here. I don’t know how I ever thought I could make it through this weekend without you, but I need you.
” He takes my hand and squeezes it between his.
“Will you stay tomorrow for the ceremony? I’ll find a way to pay if there’s a charge to change your plane ticket. I just need you here with me.”
“It’s already done. I’m here until Sunday.”
He pulls me close and presses his lips to my head. I shut my eyes and hold on, for a moment pushing away everything I need to say to him. “Jade,” he whispers. He shifts so that his forehead rests on mine and I can look into his eyes. “I want to be with you, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”
All I can do is nod, choked again by emotion.
“I know you have doubts about me and how things are going to change next year and what that’ll do to us. But nothing could ever matter more to me than you.”
I shake my head. “I never had any doubts about you. That’s where I went wrong: not telling you that I never had a single doubt about wanting you. I felt exactly what you felt. I fell in love with you before I ever saw it coming.”
Reeve squeezes his eyes shut like my words have bruised him. Knowing my love means this much to him fills me with joy and fear. I can’t ever let myself hurt him again.
I slide my hand under his shirt and up his chest to his heart.
The steady beat under my palm reminds me of his strength and his vulnerability, and I vow silently to forever protect them both.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “All that time I was falling in love with you, I never bothered to let you know. I kept myself locked up so tight.”
The emotion in his eyes is so pure. He tucks my hair behind my ear and lets his finger graze slowly down my neck, setting off an explosive shiver.
“It doesn’t matter now.” His hands draw a slow, tantalizing trail across my shoulder, between my breasts, down my belly, and back up again.
His touch is light as a feather, but it rocks me to my core.
I draw in a shuddering breath. His scent makes me feel drunk. It’s getting hard to keep my eyes open, the temptation to shut up and just feel overwhelming. “It does matter. There’s so much I should have said to you.”
He smiles and tilts my chin up until my lips feel the warmth of his. “We have the rest of our lives for that.”
He kisses me and all the pain and hurt inside me releases.
For this one moment, doubt and fear don’t exist, and in their place something solid—something I can believe in forever—takes root.
I grip his shoulders and deepen the kiss.
My nipples ache when his smooth hands curve around to my lower back and he dips his fingers inside my jeans.
I undress him slowly and methodically, craving his naked skin against mine, and he mirrors my movements until we’re both standing on a bed of discarded clothing.
He lifts me off the ground, his strength making it seem effortless and making his arms feel like the safest place I’ve ever known, and I wrap my legs around him and let him carry me to the armchair in the corner, where he centers me in his lap so the hot bulge of his cock is pressed torturously between us.
One hand cups my ass while the other fondles my breast, tugging lightly at my piercing exactly the way he knows I love it.
I let him set the pace, not rushing him even though my body longs for more.
For the first time, I know in my heart we have forever.
He leans down, lashing my stiff nipple with his slick tongue, making my back arch.
My hips move involuntarily, grinding against him, seeking the rhythm that will push me over the edge.
His lips move up my neck to my mouth, where he locks me in a kiss.
We’re both hungry for more; his mouth has the same frenzied, restless energy as mine.
But even if we have the rest of our lives, I need him to know what’s in my heart now.
I can’t let it pass us by like I’ve done so many times.
I pull back and look into his hazy eyes. “I never knew I could want anything as much as I want this.”
“Want what?”
“Your body. You. This moment.”
He gives me a blissful smile. “It’s all yours. Tonight and forever.”
There’s nothing more to say, so I let myself get lost in his kiss again.
I raise onto my knees and guide him inside me.
He looks into my eyes as I sink deep down onto him, and my breath goes out of me.
He rakes his beautiful gaze over me, watching my face, my breasts, my hips as I ride him in a steady, unhurried rhythm.
Outside the window next to us, the city is endless noise and light, but in here there’s only the sound of us together. Me and Reeve, against all odds.
Tension coils inside me, tight as a spring.
I watch him sink his teeth into his lower lip, and I trace my thumb over the contours of his mouth, along his jaw and down his chest. His perfect features twist as his muscles turn drum tight under my hands.
When I’m sure we’re both about to come, I lean down to bury my face in his neck, not wanting an inch of space between us.
His arms wrap around my back, and I let out a broken gasp as pleasure overcomes me and he thrusts hard, losing himself inside me.
The tension melts slowly away as the acute ecstasy of orgasm mellows into contentedness. But Reeve’s arms remain tight around me.
“I was thinking about some of the things I said to you before I had any idea we’d end up together,” Reeve says later as we wash up in the shower, watching me tip my head back under the spray. “Shitty things.”
“Like saying I’m a total bitch? It’s okay, honey. When you’re right, you’re right.”
“I never called you a total bitch.” He licks his lips. “Out loud.”
I flick my fingers open, showering his face with droplets of water. “And here I thought I was about to get an apology of some kind.”
He wipes the water off his face with one big hand and then wraps an arm around my waist. “No,” he murmurs.
“Things like how the more you know someone, the harder it is to worship them anymore. I don’t know if I really believed that or I just wanted to so I could go on thinking I was better off lonely.
But I was wrong.” He reaches for my hand and squeezes so hard it hurts.
“So don’t go leaving me, because if you do, I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking for someone like you who I fall harder for every time I see what you’re trying to hide from the world. ”
I squeeze his hand back. Tonight I’ll go to sleep with a dozen new uncertainties about my future crowding my brain and the hundred questions that uncertainty will spawn, but none of them will be about Reeve.