7. - – Dean
CHAPTER SEVEN
-
DEAN
The summer passed quickly, and the Ardis Ranch festival was in two weeks.
I wanted to stop calling what we had fake.
We were real to the entire world, Jules was in denial.
The dates, the dinners with my family, and the sunset rides weren’t fake, but the closer we got, the more she guarded her heart.
There was more to what happened eight years ago, but I kept my word to Jonah.
I hadn’t pushed. Part of me knew it was bad, and just maybe, I didn’t want to know.
Some demons were best left in hell. Some skeletons shouldn’t be unearthed.
After watching Jules and the darkness that lurked in her absent gaze when she thought no one noticed was the type of pain that invented secrets.
Regardless, those demons, skeletons, and secrets were standing between me and my forever. That wouldn’t do.
“Princess, where’d you go?”
I’d just gotten out of the shower and found her staring at nothing. It took a few blinks for her to come back to the present—to me. The darkness didn’t leave though.
“Whatever you’re thinking—don’t.” I sat next to her on my bed in nothing but my boxer briefs. Her eyes traced over my tattoos, the ones that kept her with me even though I’d lost her.
“Jules, please?—”
“It wasn’t meant to be real…” A tear fell. Her voice cracked and died.
“That’s just it, Princess, when we started, I said I had my own reasons.”
She nodded.
“Us—we’re real because I never stopped loving you.”
Jules shook her head as more tears fell.
“Don’t. I get to love you.”
“You shouldn’t.” The regret showed in her reticence.
I tipped her head up; I wanted her eyes on mine. “Too bad. I do. My choice, not yours.”
“Dean… I can’t do this anymore.”
No! I need more time. I watched the steady stream of tears fall. She loves me but was still going to push me away.
“Princess, the festival is in two weeks.”
“I know.” Jules’ eyes were on me, but she was looking through me.
“You’ve got this until then.”
Please, Princess.
“Fuck them.,” Jules roared and stood. With each pacing step, the warmth seeped from my heart. I couldn’t make her stay.
“I’ll stop being a coward and tell them to go to hell,” she bellowed.
I snapped, standing too. “How about you stop being a coward and let me love you instead?”
“What?” She whipped around and glared at me.
“You heard me. Choose bravery. I know you love me. We confessed our love under the stars”—I slapped the galaxy on my chest—“wrapped in each other’s arms next to the river”—I ran my palm over the flowing river—“Fuck fear. Take a leap of faith, Jules.”
“I don’t know how!” she screamed, tugging her hair.
I needed to hold her, but her claws were out. “Princess, close your eyes and leap.”
“I can’t,” she heaved.
“You can. I’ll catch you. Trust me—please… This isn’t fake and you know it,” I whisper-growled.
“Agree to disagree,” she spat with burning rage.
“Jules, stop.”
“I told you. My. Body. Only,” she seethed the jarring reminder.
I’d pushed too hard, too fast. Fuck it. It was all or nothing. “It was more than just your body the first time—admit it.”
As we stared off, an eerie silence laced with fear, anger, and love cloaked the room.
Thump-thump… Thump-thump… Thump-thump.
My heart sped up. In just a few words, she could demolish me.
Too late.
I’m in too deep.
I’d tasted her—owned her body. She was in denial because, under the rage, hatred, and anger, she’d given me her heart. But unless she admitted it, I’d lose her again. Jules held all the power.
I waited.
Slowly dying.
She was my deliverance.
My Princess could either resurrect my long-dead heart or drive the final nail in.
Time stood still. The sounds of her ragged breathing filled my ears. The clammy sweat chilled my skin.
Then… she stepped closer.
I matched it.
She was at war with herself. I saw the lust—the need—her anger.
The skin over my knuckles threatened to split as I fought my desire to take her into my arms. I ached to pounce in the name of desire and hate, longing and love, but not until she willingly gave me her heart and permission.
Another step toward me.
I echoed it.
The heat of her carnal breaths sent fire raging through me while her cool expression tried to douse the passion attempting to incinerate my bones into charred relics.
My mind bellowed for me to run in self-preservation because I’d been here before, with my heart and soul on the line, and she’d ruined me.
But second chances rarely came, if ever.
Better to gamble and lose than live with the regret of ‘what if’ until the end of time. I held my ground.
No regrets. “We’re worth fighting for.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped.
Liar. The erratic pulsing in her neck betrayed her. She knew exactly what I meant. “Stop lying… Let. Me. In.”
“Fine.” Jules pushed me toward the bed. I moved with her shove because I wanted to.
When my ass hit the mattress, I spoke. “I’m needier than that, Princess… give me what I want.”
“What the fuck do you need, you fickle little bitch?” she snarled in my face as she straddled my hips.
“I’m done hate-fucking you… I want your heart.”
Jules shook her head and tore off her shirt, leaving just our underwear separating us.
Unless she was offering her heart along with that sexy-as-fuck body, there was an ocean separating us.
She wanted to distract me with sex, but I was done…
stubborn and sturdy as an oak—unmovable, metaphorically and literally.
“Do you teach your students to behave like this?”
“Like what?” she growled.
“Bratty?”
She leaned forward and purred, “Please, Dean… I want you.”
I gripped her by the hair, jerked her head back, and licked up her neck.
She moaned, thinking I’d caved. With my wet lips on her earlobe, I whispered, “And I want you… All. Of. You, Princess.” The staccato statement was punctuated with bites and kisses, leaving her cheeks flushed, pussy dripping through her panties and my boxers, and water building in her eyes, but she was too stubborn to let them fall.
I wouldn’t push about the ghosts haunting her—she’d run. But I was done acting like she wasn’t it for me.
“I’ll try.”
The words ripped me apart.
I kissed her cheek. “What do you need, Princess?”
“To not think… to feel safe and cherished. To relearn how to be loved. Dean…” The tears finally cascaded down her reddened cheeks. “Help me.”
I scooped her up and cradled her. “Anything you need, it’s yours.”
She buried her head into my chest. Her words reverberated through my ribcage. “I’ve always loved you, but I’m different—broken.”
I wiped her tears away and took in her midnight-storm-cloud eyes. “Changed maybe, but never broken. You hear me?”
She nodded weakly, desperate to believe me. “Make love to me, Dean.”
She didn’t have to ask me twice.
I pulled the comforter back and got us both bare. I needed the heat of her body against mine. I nestled myself between her legs, ran my nose up her chin, and dropped a soft kiss on her lips.
“Jules, I love you.”
Her worried eyes danced back and forth, consuming me. In a faint breath, Jules answered my prayers. “I love you too.”
I claimed her lips, but for the first time in eight years, it was tender. A kiss too honest to take back, and we fell into it, not with force, fight, or hatred, but with gravity.
She didn’t use her anger to push me away. I tasted the surrender upon her tongue and in the caress of her petal-soft lips as we breathlessly devoured one another.
“Dean… Please.”
I rolled to my back and pulled her on top of me while sliding deep inside. Jules’ heated whimper was my reward. She would be in my arms while we made love for the first time. I didn’t want to pin her down or make her compliant. The gift was in her willingness.
My hips bucked up. She cried out, slammed her palms to my chest, and rode me.
The warm wetness spilling out of her onto my pelvis was enough to drive me mad.
Slick, slapping sounds filled the room and almost made me cave—the need to flip her over and thrust into her hard with reckless abandon tore through me the faster she took my cock.
The sweet moans, cries, and breaths spilling from her as she took her pleasure from my body loosened the fear strangling my heart.
I drove up, and she crashed down. The sacred sensation of her flesh under my touch was ecstasy.
“Dean—”
Whatever she was going to say was lost when my thumb found her clit and pressed.
Jules came. The evidence of her pleasure ran down my balls and coated my inner thighs.
I lost it and flipped her over—a man out of control and madly in love drove deeply into the woman who owned every inch of him while we chanted some version of I love you to each other over and over and over.
When lightning struck just below my navel and tugged tightly on my balls, Jules was crying out another orgasm as I filled her with mine.
I struggled to catch my breath, but the lack of oxygen wouldn’t stop me. As I took in her cornflower-blue eyes, I laid my claim on every part of her. “I fucking love you, Jules. You’re mine. You hear me?”
She nodded.
“Damn it, woman—words.” I pinched her chin while still buried deep inside.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I’m yours, my brute,” she teased.
“No take backs.” I kissed the tip of her nose.
“No take backs,” she agreed.
I rolled us and pulled her into my arms, tugging the blanket up as I went so she wouldn’t get cold. Nothing could’ve prepared me for what came next.
“It wasn’t because Mama died. The way you took care of me was…” She paused and inhaled. “Everything I needed. More than I knew to ask for.”
Oh shit. Here we go. She’s going to tell me. I needed to know but wasn’t ready. It didn’t matter, I was all in with this woman.