10. Jessica
JESSICA
“Hey!” I snatched the towel I had covering my face from the sun off my face and got ready to square off with whichever one of my idiot brothers thought it was a good idea to disrupt my peace and quiet.
Instead, I sat up in haste, only to come face to face with my nemesis.
This bitch! Did I conjure him with my stupid thoughts?
I got even more pissed just looking at him. “Yo, what about our last conversation convinced you that I was remotely interested in having another one with you?” If looks could slaughter, his ass would be fish bait. My eyes were damn near crossed as hard as I was glaring up at him.
For some reason, he wasn’t speaking, just towering over me like a jackass with that stupid look on his face. There was no emotion written on his face, so I was very surprised by his next move. “HEY!” I yelled when he leaned down and dragged me up off the lounger.
I opened my mouth to blast him, but this fiend shoved his tongue in my mouth while holding me hostage with his arm wrapped tight around my waist and the other gripping my hair in a fist. Has he lost his mind? I tried asking that question with my mouth full of his tongue.
I tried even harder to hold onto my anger, but without my bidding, I became very aware of our closeness.
It started with the feel of my bikini-clad nipples pressed hard against his hard, muscled chest, then moved onto the way I felt safe and somewhat coddled in his embrace, like finally coming home.
My mind was screaming for me to get the hell away from him, but my body seemed more than happy to leave things just the way they are. Each time I caught my breath and tried breaking away, that grip on my hair grew tighter, and I lost my train of thought again.
I was sneakily enjoying it just a little, but I’d be damned if I let him know that. I was very aware that I wasn’t breathing and hadn’t for at least half a minute. Everything in me was on high alert, but his mouth was doing things that were messing with my mind.
I couldn’t hold a thought; they all disappeared as soon as they came, and I became one big ball of heat. There was a tingling sensation running from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet, and I could no longer hear the world around me.
He teased my tongue out of hiding with his, and I almost swooned when he caught it and sucked ever so gently before giving me his tongue to feed on again. We went on like that for I don’t know how long, but I was fast losing the fight.
Then things changed, and I was the one chasing his tongue around like a wanton hussy.
This jackass waited until I had no fight left and was all but giving in to release me as abruptly as he’d grabbed me.
It only took a moment to clear my head, and I clamped my legs together to keep the kitty in her drawers because she was acting kinda suspect.
Then the dust cleared, and I was back to my senses or close enough.
He caught my hand before the slap landed on his cheek and pulled both my hands behind my back, pulling me even closer to him. Miss Kitty felt that log behind his zipper and started her shit, hell no. What the hell is going on in the universe?
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Okay, my voice sounded firm enough to my ears, even though I wasn’t even sure that I was breathing. He kept me in suspense for what felt like forever, just standing there staring down at me, all pressed up against me in all the right places.
“I wish I knew.”
Why the hell is he mad at me? I was ready to cuss his ass to kingdom come, but he raised his hand and rubbed just the corner of my mouth with his thumb. Whose rulebook has he been reading? This is like all the shit from some corny romcom. So why the hell are my knees weak?
I’ve never been into this kind of flowery bullshit; in fact, I never let anyone get close enough to play cute with me, not even Dale, and I was with him for a few years. Julius had just done in two minutes what my ex has never been able to achieve in way more time. He’d confused me.
A part of me knew very well why he was able to bombard my senses even though I hate his guts.
But there was no way in hell I was listening to that annoying ass voice.
I need him to go back to wherever he came from and give me the time I need to get myself together.
I need to put my barriers back in place so that this never happens again.
If I’d seen this coming, I could’ve prepared myself better, but I hadn’t seen or heard from him since that day in his office, and I had a hell of a time getting over that little experience. How the hell long is it going to take me to get over this latest attack?
“Are you planning on letting me go anytime soon?”
“I’m debating!” That thumb was still making tracks along my lip line and driving me crazy.
“Well, can you do it somewhere else? And please release me. We’re not that close.” I sneered at him, feeling more like myself now that he had released my mouth at least.
I tried to lean back when he leaned over and put his lips to my ear, but he just tightened his hold on me. “We’re about to get a whole lot closer.” He whispered those words in my ear, and just the brush of his lips against my skin had me twitching. Wait, what did he just say?
Okay, somebody is playing a joke on me. Got to be!
I’m smack dab in the middle of destroying Dale and his little girlfriend.
This one is nowhere on my radar, except for the nights when he invades my dreams and makes a nuisance of himself.
But this, the dreams didn’t prepare me for this, and some of them have been beyond X-rated.
The whole assault on my senses had lasted less than five minutes, but it felt like it went on forever. I don’t know how long we stood there like that with him not saying anything, and me needing a moment to myself to catch up with my runaway thoughts.
“Did you feel that?”
“What?”
“What just happened between us!” Oh, he’s one of those. “Don’t even try to lie because I can feel you. That pulse in your neck is going haywire, and this…” He placed his palm over my heart, “Hasn’t stopped racing since the first moment I touched you.”
If he would only let me go for a brief second, then I could get my thoughts together and not just stand here like a ninny. “Oh, that, I act that way with everyone.” You would think I killed his firstborn. “Hey!” He wrapped his hand around my neck and pulled our faces close.
“Say that again.”
JULIUS
She repeated it word for word while defiantly staring into my eyes, daring me. Everyone knows that Chase Thornton raised a pack of damn wolves, but this one is my own personal P.U.M.A., pain up my ass.
Of course, I knew she would do it because she has more guts than an entire backline, but I wasn’t about to let her get away with that shit at this point in the game. I bit her lip, then licked the sting with my tongue, all while holding her in place with my hand around her neck.
I was about to do a hell of a lot more, but my senses alerted me to the fact that someone else was witnessing this little play.
“If your father wasn’t watching us from the window, I’d make you pay for that.
You’re not going to get many more chances to mouth off at me in the future, so get them all out now while you’re safe. ”
“I don’t understand any of what you just said. Is that a new language? While I’m talking to you, why are you sniffing around here?” She did some kind of self-defense move that I wasn’t expecting and escaped my hold; I felt the separation immediately.
And what was she doing while I stood there feeling like someone had taken a limb just because I was no longer touching her? Glaring and all but foaming at the mouth. How can she infuriate and excite me at the same time, every time? Doesn’t she realize the danger?
One punch on the chin should set her straight, but she’s too cute for that, so I’ll have to find another way that would work when the nut in the window was around.
I can’t kiss her anymore because my dick was already acting like a divining rod in my damn pants.
One wrong move and he’d probably try to take over.
I was about to say something else to answer her question, but I happened to look into her eyes just then; wrong move, but we’ll talk about that later. She has these expressive eyes, at least to me they are. And when I looked into them now, I saw…fear.
Not a deep, unmoving fear of physical harm, more like a fear of me and what I could do to her; fear of me rejecting her again.
Why have I never thought about that before?
The fact that she might be just as wary of me as I am of her?
I guess I’ve just always been aware of her feelings for me and had somehow taken it for granted that they were still there. They better the fuck be.
“Why am I sniffing around you? Because my intuition tells me that you’re mine. Until I figure that shit out, I’ll sniff as much as I want. I’ll be back at seven. Be ready.”
“Oh, dear. Did you get an expired medical shot, or were you made this way?” She tapped her temple, implying that I was nuts.
I probably am, because I have no idea why the hell I just invited her out to dinner.
I came over here to put her in her lane, but this one takes the whole damn highway with her bullshit.
I’m mad and turned on at the same time, which is a bit of a conundrum, and for some reason, each time she gives me one of her insolent looks or rolls her eyes at me, my dick gets harder.
“Jessica, just be ready!” She swallowed hard at my tone, and I knew she was fighting to stand here with me, half-naked as she was.
Funny, I forgot about what she was wearing or not wearing, so I’m guessing she’s not just a body like the others that only lasted as long as that physical need was there. And I’m fucked.
Calm down, Julius, take a deep breath. I brushed a stray lock of hair off her cheek, drew her in for a forehead kiss, then turned and walked away. If I didn’t, who knows what this uncontrollable urge would lead to.
I started to wave at her Dad facetiously, but thought better of it in the end. There’s no telling how he would react or what hell he’d add to my daily existence. The whole family is nuts as far as I can tell, no judgment here though.
CHASE
“That boy is slow as molasses.”
“Is he? Or is it our daughter?” She’s got a point. Those two have been sniffing around each other for a while now, at least that’s how I see it. I’m sure they don’t think that anyone knows.
I don’t know when it started, but I put two and two together a few years ago when my kid started ditching any engagement that he might attend. It could’ve been happening much longer than that, and I never noticed, but from the time I picked up on the pattern, I kept myself on alert.
Julius is the son of one of my closest acquaintances, both professionally and personally. A man of integrity who had raised his kids pretty close to the way I raised my own. I know his standards and trust them.
When I realized that there was interest there, I was glad in a way that my little girl could possibly end up with his son. Then she got into a serious relationship, and I thought that was that, even though it was obvious to all of us that they were in no way compatible, my kid and that Dale person.
I’d long put the idea of her and Julius getting together behind me, though, so I wasn’t prepared to see it again that night, when he came here.
There was an unspoken understanding between us men when I let him handle that idiot woman in the driveway, one that I hoped he picked up on, and it looks like he did.
When I sent her to his office, I was expecting something to come of it, but here we are, almost a week out, and he’s only now making a move. Kids! I watched them out the window before things started heating up, then I dragged my wife away when the boy wrapped his hand around my kid’s neck.
There was no need to step in, even though he looked pretty mad from where I stood, because I know him very well. If there was any danger of that, he wouldn’t get ten feet near her. “What do you think is going on?”
“What do you think? Those two might need some help, though.” I know my kid, and that stuff the boy just pulled, wrapping his hand around her throat and all the other mess, is not going to go over very well.
I’m pretty well aware of the way I was with my wife when we first met. That feeling of possessiveness that makes one crazy one moment and deliriously happy the next is hard to control. The things I did back then, I could get away with, but I’m sure I wouldn’t get far today.
When we met, my wife was a victim of constant abuse from those who were supposed to love her. She can hold her own now because I made sure to give her wings so she could fly. Everything her family had robbed her of, I gave back in full.
Now she’s a strong, self-assured woman who is nothing like the scared young girl I first met all those years ago.
My kid, on the other hand, was raised like the princess she is; all of my kids were raised to know that they matter.
The shit I pulled back then, I don’t think would work on my girls today.
I should probably give the boy some pointers because, from what I saw out the window, he’s following in my footsteps, and with my little darling daughter, that shit might get him killed or maimed, neither of which is good.